He woke up around eleven, and rolled straight over to his pc, caught up on the latest geopolitical news for a few hours before realising it was making him feel bad and that he should be doing something productive instead. He decided to go for a walk and think about his poem at their bench with a little thought in the back of his mind that he might see Sarah again. The park was in the middle of town and it would take him over an hour to walk there but he had no other plans for the day or even the weekend. As he was about to leave he heard his neighbour opening their door so he waited by his own until he heard them leave, he didn't want to see them or more specifically have them see him. He wondered if the neighbours did the same when they heard him, he had only seen each of them a handful of times in his entire time there.

Maybe they are just like me, maybe it is something about this place, nothing spiritual or anything, just the basic makeup of it, the small single bedrooms keeping couples and families away, the location away from any club areas or cafes keeping the more sociable people away, the cheap rent and dated building keeping any young professional away, all that's left is antisocial losers like me. Am I really a loser? probably about average, girlfriend, enough money, ok job, not too many mental health issues, not too many... sign of our times, I function...

Ast took a lot of pride in how he had clawed his way out of his deep depression without help even if it took him close to a decade, this pride lead to him refusing to acknowledge how often he still had negative thought patterns, he deluded himself to think that nothing was wrong with his thought patterns which did help him to dwell on them less and even though they still popped up frequently, he no longer defined himself by them. He knew he should get therapy and reconciliate with his family, try and control his drinking and find some real motivation but he was worried about doing it because he saw it as a last resort. He wanted to keep therapy as an emergency option, it gave him hope that if things for some reason got unbearably bad he would still have available tools he could use to possibly alleviate them. He was worried that if he tried therapy and fixed his family relationships but it didn't make him feel at peace then now he would only be one tragedy away from a complete breakdown. He waited at the door thinking about therapy, he had heard a statistic that over two thirds of adults had been in therapy by the time they were thirty. These days most of that was AI based therapy, people would still meet with psychologists but the psychologists would have augmented reality glasses to guide their responses in real time. He hadn't looked into this much, i'll look into it later

It was unusually cold for the time of year but he opted not to go back and get a jacket, believing he thought better when cold, as he checked his empty mailbox he thought back to his youth where he used to intentionally avoid any heating in order to build up a tolerance in case one day he would be in a worse situation or homeless and needed to battle the cold, he thought about how he used to do so many more things like this, he used to be much tougher, he used to go days without eating just for the challenge in doing so, take cold showers, he used to skip sleeping and go to work just for the challenge in doing so, these days he rarely did such a thing, he had gotten comfortable and complacent. I'll start them again soon

He walked around the corner and down a major road and noticed an old lady asleep in her car. This caught his attention as he had never seen something like this, sure, he had seen homeless people asleep in cars all the time, particularly at night time but she was in the drivers seat with it reclined, looked to be tidy and well kept, she had her window half the way down and had a dog in the back seat. He wondered how she could even sleep like that, it made no sense to him, why she wasn't somewhere quiet, this wasn't an intercity route so it's not likely she was resting on a road trip, it was a residential area. He tried to think what she could be doing there, to invent a story for her but he came up mostly blank, the best he came up with was that she was waiting on a friend who was running late. He gave up on thinking about it and tried to focus on his poem but that wasn't working either, he couldn't tell what was distracting him, it felt as if he had an issue needing to be solved before he could resume conscious control of his mind.

Instead of searching for what was troubling him he resorted to a type of game he had played since he was a kid when he was out in public and had nothing else to think about. This consisted of him looking the first three characters of car license plates (that were always letters) and trying to invent a mnemonic that he could use to remember it or to recall his existing one that he had created before. This was mostly pointless but it did help him remember the number plates and therefore cars of people he knew if he saw them around town although these days he knew very few people so that use was no longer relevant. He 'played' this the whole way into town in-between people watching and seeing all the changes to local shops. Their bench was empty, it was just after 2pm and he resolved to himself that he wouldn't leave until 5pm because this was after the time he had seen her there yesterday. Three hours, he couldn't remember the last time he sat and did nothing for that long, the closest was a plane trip about 5 years ago where he decided to not look at his phone or read anything for the whole trip, just stared ahead and got lost in his own mind, that lasted under two hours though. He only now thought about how strange he must have looked to other people on the plane, if they had of even noticed, do people notice those types of things? they have their own issues they are too focused on

He brought his mind back to his poem, sometimes Ast's thoughts would take more of a form of different personalities talking to each other, debating each other. Usually each of the personalities would refer to the others as the true Ast but sometimes a certain personality would speak for the collective 'we' as if he was the representation of the consensus. He usually used this structure of thinking when he felt like there was something about himself that he was not being honest about as if these more antagonistic personalities would be more objective and show him what he was in denial of. This was the case for Ast's thoughts today and while his mind went off on tangents about irrelevant things or his surroundings that we will not mention, this was the bulk of his thoughts related to his poem

What am I doing this poem for? or rather why am I writing this poem? To teach people about regret and to not fall into it? people already know that, there are thousands of stories about that. It's boring and nobody wants to be lectured, but people still make the same mistakes, they just need to be taught it properly, why? isn't regret and negative emotions just part of being alive? I can't get hung up on this question, philosophers have tried to solve it for decades, decades? millenniums, ha. I really don't care about teaching them anyway, I just want to show them something, what they do with that is up to them. But surely they have experienced something like this anyway? maybe, but not to the same extent, why does the extent matter? it sounds like I'm just trying to act like I'm deeper and feel things more than others. It's really not about that, it's about how easy it is to stop paying attention, to forget to think about what matters.

You're still missing the point, you're talking about the poem specifics but to get the poem specifics first you need to understand why you are writing the poem. Why would it matter? I have made a decision to write it so it no longer matters why I'm writing it, well, if you know why you are writing it, it will help you with shaping the poem to achieve that goal. There is no goal, I just want to express an idea I saw and help other people to feel what I felt. Yeah, but why do you want them to think what you felt? is it that you think your way of thinking is superior? deeper? is it that you think they should just understand more ways to look at the world? is it that you think feeling what you felt would help them in their life?

You're still missing the point, you're talking about the goal of this specific poem, I need to work out why I'm writing a poem at all. I don't think you can separate them, I'm not just writing a poem, I'm writing this specific poem. Maybe, but you are writing a poem as well. It doesn't matter, it matters, you just know the reasons make you sound bad, you have 3 hours, you might as well figure it out. I'm writing the poem to prove that I can actually write a poem, I've lived in my head for decades telling myself that I could actually finish poems if I wanted to but the actual point of creating them was less important than the ideas stage. Sure, but it is less important still, right? the only point of actually finishing them is either for others benefit or so you can receive some self satisfaction from possible praise. What about the self satisfaction simply for sticking to them until they're finished? I guess that's something but nobody cares, it doesn't make you any smarter, if anything it makes you dumber because you spend more of your mental energy in a less important area like how to express what you already know as accurately as possible to others. That sounds like a more important skill than I thought it should, I meant is it only for their benefit? why is it not to your benefit if they understand you better and can point out any flaws since they know what you are actually saying? if you are as smart as you think you are then it would be to your benefit to be able to show people this because then they would treat you better. I don't care how I'm treated. Well, you would be able to attract a better quality of people which would benefit you. Maybe, but I'd be a phony, I'd become less smart if I spent all my time on essentially finding a way to show people I am smart instead of actually just focusing on becoming smarter. If I skip caring about learning to actually put my ideas into words and express them properly then I might have the time to become smart enough that even with my poor ability to express myself holding me back, I still might reach the same level of admiration from others. You can compromise, you could write your poem without putting much effort into the actual words you choose, or the structure, the conciseness etc. you could spend your mental effort on the underlying ideas and themes but just put a little effort into actually expressing it, you don't have to make a huge sacrifice. Sure, but it would still be some sacrifice? ok, if it doesn't work you can go back to how you used to do things, keep inventing poems and stories in your mind and tell no one and get nowhere, that worked out so well for you. I know you are being sarcastic but it does work for me, it gives my life wonder and keeps my mind occupied and off the more detrimental thoughts I used to battle with.

Yeah, you might be dying though, nuclear war and all that, plus you're getting really really fucking old, you should probably at least write something before you die, it's actually the most poetic time to start, when your life is practically over either literally or metaphorically through a lack of options due to your age. Imagine that, you write a beautiful poem that shows people some previously hidden idea in the world and then you die, the world is forever wondering just what else you might have been able to share, it would give your poem a divine type of significance and art, people love those sort of stories to tell about their favourite writers, it makes them think that art is more than just the words from a unique mind and actually a reflection from the world that can only happen under very unique circumstances, it gives their self perceived unique choices and path in life justification and provides them with a renewed drive to look for the hidden beauty in the world. That's a good way to think, maybe not good for the individual but good for humanity to have more people like that.

Why should I care about putting out a poem even if my death would make it more special? Am I just doing it to fill my ego? how would that make sense, I'd be dead. It could make sense, what I would feel while I'm alive, like it's going to make me important after death. Why would it make you important? none of these people will ever know the real you, I guess it could make your last few months feel good, make you feel better about your death and how you wasted your whole life stuck in your mind, as if all those years in your mind weren't wasted as if all those years thinking about poetry and stories really were practice for this final one. But that's basically the story of the poem, would that make the poem meta? if my reasons for writing the poem were analogous to what the poem is about. But I decided that in my poem the guy would miss his chance to forge a real connection with his boss, to finally capitalise and bring meaning to all those years together. The poem couldn't have the same meaning for me unless I didn't write it or I died before I wrote it. I could write it not because I was experiencing what was in the poem but rather I was afraid of what happens in the poem happening to me, that would be meta still, it would be like the story in the poem is a warning for other people to capitalise on their opportunities and take life seriously and the mere act of me writing this was me confronting that issue myself. That's poetic, but maybe it would be more poetic if I missed my chance to write it, maybe I could make another level of meta, write about a hypothetical me who missed their chance to write the poem. I don't think meta is important to this message, often it's an overrated crutch dumb people use to act like they are deeper, it's like ironic humour, the joke gets old fast.

I should stick to my original story but I will definitely write it, it has nothing to do with ego or what people think of me for it, I just need to start being real, to actualise myself in the world, there is nothing better to do anyway without Ner around. You know you want Sarah to think better of you for it, you know you would feel bad if she found out you abandoned it. Why do I care so much about what Sarah thinks? I don't even know her, probably because she seems more real than me.

Just as he thought this he noticed someone coming from an entrance to this area, his heart fluttered as he expected Sarah to emerge but it was an old man, Ast tried not to stare but he noticed the old man looked over at him as he walked slowly across the bottom of the hill and towards the other path and left again. Ast wondered if the old man would have used the bench if Ast wasn't occupying it, he thought about Sarah, how she was bolder than this old man whose time was almost up and had nothing left to lose. Maybe he just doesn't like other people or maybe this was just a time when he wanted a quiet place to be alone, I should have given up the spot but doing so would have been strange, how would you even word that? 'I was just leaving' but he might not know what you are talking about, he might not have wanted the bench and was just lost or mindlessly wandering, he did look to be mindlessly wandering though I guess everyone walking without a dog looks like this to people, it's just not what people are supposed to do, they're supposed to have actual things to do, thinking thoughts and just existing isn't an actual thing. Do I look like this old man to others? he looks as if his wife died and now he strolls through the world reminiscing better times and trying to find peace in the world, or maybe he strolls because he has peace and doesn't need to make things happen, he doesn't need to actually exist in the world to feel fulfilled. I'm really not talking about him, I'm trying to justify my own nature to myself, I don't have an excuse like he probably does, I haven't experienced real loss, my dad was too young, nothing really bad ever happened to me. I almost died though at my own hands so I guess I can relate to his feeling that everyday is now a blessing, whatever happens is ok. That's no way to live though. Why not? how can it be bad to think whatever happens is fine? because even if things will always be fine, certain things can be better than others and if you don't differentiate things in terms of how good they would be then you will be resigned to a life of mediocrity. What is mediocrity? I guess it's dying without ever having written a good poem, but does that matter? that's 99.9999% of humanity. I guess caring about what happens is a requirement to being real, to actually affect things and have an impact in a shared reality and not just your mind. An unreal person only cares about how they feel and what they think. But those things are just as real to them. I don't know, this sounds like nihilism and you are making excuses for your lack of action.

Just do it, just write your poem, trying the same thing for years hasn't got you far. But it has got me far? I can mostly control my emotions now, I can keep a work schedule, I feel ok, even good getting up most days, I have improved. That doesn't mean it's the best path to take, maybe to improve to the next step you need to actually make things and live in the world. Is it worth the risk though? I was improving anyway. Yeah but those improvements weren't real, you should make them real now. Imagine if you spent all this effort actually writing instead of thinking about why you were writing, you could be done by now. I can't know what to write unless I know what the point of it is which includes the point of the writer. The writer doesn't need a point, you know what you want to happen to the characters so just write it.

Anyone would think I'm tortured by a dead wife, maybe I am to an extent, Ner isn't the same, she is lost forever and may as well be dead, I can never make it right. That ties into the regret I am trying to express in my poem, why do I need to express regret? is it really to warn people? is it to help them handle their own regret possibly by letting them know it's normal? is it just to make them feel something?

Regret is a funny thing, you can't teach people how to handle it, if you do then it's no longer really regret, I guess it is really regret but it's not -real- regret, the whole point of -real- regret is that you can't handle it. I guess that could be a point then, to turn peoples -real- regret into the more mundane kind of regret people can live with, are people supposed to learn how to handle -real- regret though? Imagine that someone thinks about talking to their child when they notice they look depressed but stays silent and then the child ends up killing themselves and now the parent has the regret of not trying to stop them. Is that something humans should be able to live with? is that the kind of thing I should be helping them live with or avoid?

Those people themselves never want to live with it, they feel like they would be a monster if they did, usually everyone around them is trying to help them live with it though, to force them to live with it, they invent all sorts of justifications possibly even true ones as to why it helps no one if they go on living in such self torment but the fact of the matter is that someone who can live with something like that isn't completely real either. So what is the person dealing with a regret like that supposed to do? I think the best option is they sort of divide up what they consider to be 'them', they create a new persona while keeping the old one deep inside, they never truly forget it but they let that part of their personality deal with the regret and they let the newer one deal with life. That just sounds like cliché advice, 'you aren't defined by one bad choice', I guess it's true but you are somewhat defined by it and if it's impossibly bad then the fact that it was just one small mistake should be irrelevant. People can change though, I changed, I'm no longer nihilistic, back then I hated everyone and could have probably killed someone but now I'm good, I really am, that bad part is still there but even if those parts are impossibly bad, it's still only a small part of me.

How do I explain this? how about with math, say I made one bad decision that was infinitely bad then you might say that even though it is only a small percentage of my decisions the fact that it's infinitely bad multiples that percentage to make my entire being bad, but if you attribute that decision to a certain contained part within yourself then you can bound the upper limit to the percentage of that part which makes up the larger you.

I think the way the mind works is that sometimes you forget certain things that on a conscious level you know to be true and instinctively resort back to an established version of yourself. It's continuous with no dividing line, you basically have a part within you that has a nature unchanged since birth, its decisions aren't really decided on anything that you know, purely 'instincts'. Then you might have another part that only acts based on things you truly and deeply know, in other words things you have known for a long long time, lived experiences that happened before your personality really settled down in adulthood and some sort of stable 'you' was established. Then you have another part that acts based on things you do believe but you learnt after you became truly self aware and your personality started to settle down around twenty, it's not really things that you could say reasons for but they are things that you do accept by now. Then you have the modern you, the you who has ideas and nuanced opinions on the world that they are still working through, they are based on an ever expanding mountain of knowledge with the tip of that mountain the knowledge still being tested in the real world, the things you frequently discuss and can explain your reasons for.

Sometimes when you encounter a problem a more primitive part of your personality addresses it or dominates the conversation about it, sometimes it is due to the short time available to solve it, sometimes it's due to you being tired, out of your comfort zone or whatever. Most of the time you should be tackling problems with all your knowledge and logic rather than your primitive emotions. As you age the more primitive and impulsive parts of you deal with less and less of your day to day issues and as such they define you less. In this sense someone could really move on with regret, they could say that the type of person who chose that decision which they now regret truly is only a small instinctive part of the person who they are today, and say that they can consciously recognise that small part and avoid letting it take hold the majority of the time. The person who they are today now has far greater knowledge and experiences and as such they would react differently and it's hard to blame them for what their lesser self did as their lesser self no longer exists.

It's almost paradoxical, the person struggling with debilitating regret that makes it hard for them to act is required to act in order to learn and grow. I guess this is why it takes so long for certain people to deal with grief but it usually does eventually happen, they wallow in regret and don't do much or learn much but through sheer time they eventually change even if they aren't participating in life much. I guess this justifies why people aren't evil for trying to get them to forget their regret even if their decisions were unbelievably horrible, the only way for them to not make unbelievably horrible decisions again would be for them to change enough so they are no longer this person.

Surely there is another element here though, truly understanding how horrible their past decision was could help them avoid making similar decisions, I guess that's a factor too but truly understanding it would require truly feeling it and then we would amplify the initial problem, of them being unable to function by seeing themselves as a monster who does such horrible things. Perhaps the best way is really just to change the person in whatever way possible, both the best for that person and the best for the rest of the world.

I think you do really need them to feel how bad what happened was for at least for some duration of time as a reminder to them the consequences of their actions so they stick to the change, you need the duration or it wont feel as real. I guess this is why prison works to the degree that it does. You have the idealists who think the harsh punishment isn't needed and you can just have the social programs that teach people how to change their behaviour to the same effect. I don't blame them for this, social programs are probably enough for a lot of the sheltered people these idealists meet but that is only enough if the person punishes themselves for their crimes, the point of prisons is that a lot of people don't express moral regret for their actions, they need to be punished to feel some sort of regret even if it's artificially induced. It's true that a lot of these people shouldn't feel moral regret, they were perfectly justified in what they did due to unfortunate circumstances out of their control but does that really mean they don't need to change? maybe in an ideal world but in the real world they would still have these unfortunate circumstances and so need to learn not to act based on them in the same way. How does this apply to the citizen who didn't commit crimes but had more of a moral type of regret, do they have to punish themselves in order to permanently change? I guess there is no one answer, it depends on the person, but I need there to be one answer to some degree, for my poem to apply to the most people. Perhaps I don't want it to apply to the most people, I want it to help a niche type of person, no, I want it apply to the most people, I can make it apply to the most people by helping them understand exactly who this niche person is, so at least if they aren't the same person, they can understand it.

Let's say hypothetically I make my poem, and it shows people this idea, and it helps them avoid a similar situation in their own life, is that good? I guess it would be good as it would be helping them avoid decisions that they think are bad but maybe bad is all relative, maybe now they would feel the same amount of regret throughout their life but just due to decisions that are 'less bad'. I guess that comes back to the idea philosophers have talked about for centuries, is human suffering necessary or is it at least needed to truly feel alive? I guess it doesn't matter, let's say it doesn't reduce their absolute suffering in their life but now they suffer about things which are objectively not as bad, that has to be good, right? is that the purpose of my poem, to help people act in a way more true to themselves?

But I know what it's like to suffer over things which are 'not as bad', to suffer over 'first world problems', it adds a whole new layer of suffering. Not only are you suffering but now you also feel bad because of how inconsequential those things that are troubling you should be. It makes you feel weak and embarrassed that you could be unable to deal with such minor problems. Perhaps it's healthier in the long run if you had real problems that you cant deal with so you don't notice trivial problems, it's healthier if you experience death etc. at least then your natural inclination to wallow in suffering feels justified as if there isn't fundamentally anything wrong with you, it allows the problem to exist in the world rather than your mind which provides a convenient way to not let it define you. I guess it has pro's and con's, one is easier to get over but the other can lead to more growth. Am I saying I should make people suffer over inconsequential things instead of consequential? that makes no sense, I guess both cases are improved if the person is more alive and aware about themselves. If they are more self aware then they will integrate their regret faster and learn where it came from and learn to change regardless of if their regret comes from something big or small, I guess that should be the purpose of my poem then, to make them more self aware and honest about their own life. To do this I need to accomplish two things, I need to make them truly feel and understand the regret I feel or rather the regret my character feels and for them to understand how it could apply to their own situation to some degree. Isn't that how all poems/stories go? I should have known this by now... well, there is still the choice between it applying to a few people really well or a lot of people slightly. All the truly remarkable poems/stories apply to a lot of people so that is what I should strive for but if you fail you just seem shallow but I guess that is the case even if you fail at tunneling in on a niche idea.

Do I want to hit a niche like people who have experienced 'real' regret? or do i want to apply to everyone in other words people who could possibly experience 'real' regret. I don't think that's up to me to decide, I should just try to recreate the feeling as faithfully as possible, if that hits a niche or a wider audience then so be it.

I wonder what Sarah would suggest, maybe I should ask her. But you have Ner, true, but it wouldn't be cheating to talk to Sarah and you know Ner cheats on you anyway. It's still not right, you should rise above it and resist talking to her. Why?

As previously indicated Ast had some misogynistic views on the sexes, he took great pride in resisting his urges and felt this to be a primarily masculine trait of his, the attempt to transcend human emotions and desires. He felt as if this was at odds with women who preferred to indulge and even celebrate their humanity and faults.

This viewpoint was not backed up by any evidence but came from his limited experience with others and he projected it across the whole genders. He had seen many women brag about how crazy and illogical they were, many girls celebrate being fat, many girls getting off on the idea of cheating, young women who were driven by a need to rebel against their fathers which really was just a metaphor for rebelling against the idea of 'doing the right thing' as an excuse to embrace their human desires. In contrast he felt like men strived to become less crazy, the fat men knew they weren't the ideal weight but didn't care, they didn't celebrate it. When men cheated they didn't get off on the idea of the cheating and how they were so bad for doing it, they simply cheated because they didn't care about their partners.

Ast took pride in all these things, how he refused to define himself by his mental issues and strived to overcome them, how he maintained a healthy weight, how he ignored the one or two other girls who had shown interest in him and how he had more or less stayed between the lines of a correct and moral life. However in recent months his values had been shifting, he still valued the denial of primal desires but he was starting to feel like he needed to embrace them from time to time or he would stagnate. It was now roughly 4:30pm and he had given up hope of Sarah visiting today. He decided to text her again.

"So what do you do then?" a response to her message from yesterday, he had hoped she would interpret it as their conversation having no time pressure rather than interpreting it as him not caring to respond for a whole day.

He thought about the old man while he waited and invented some alternative life stories for why he looked so somber until her response came almost 10 minutes later.

"Lately I've been reading about neuroscience, learning to knit and watching Peaky Blinders"

Ast was pleasantly surprised she had decided to say something interesting rather than a simple answer such as what her job was, he hoped she was like him in the sense that she treated her job merely as a means to an end and almost like a break from her real life. Regardless, this answer really impressed him, how open she was in letting him into her unique quirks, Ner had been like this when he first met her but over time had become more closed off. He took this change in Ner to be an indication that she no longer cared about impressing him but from her perspective she did it more for opposite reasons. Ever since he started trying to improve himself, she felt like he was trying to force her to improve herself too and she felt that anything she said was judged intensely and as such she now shared personal things sparingly.

Ast had no idea what Peaky Blinders was but rightfully presumed it was some tv show he hadn't heard of, it cant be overstated how enamored he was with her other hobbies. Her interest in knitting because of the uniqueness, he had never known anyone under the age of 60 who had taken an interest in knitting. The interest in neuroscience was a stark contrast to Ner who (especially these days) refused to discuss any psychological topics, any discussions of exactly what is going on in their minds and how they differ. Ast realised he had made a mistake, he would never manage to get her out of his mind now.

He went home, searched up Sarah's show to find it seemed to be some slow paced drama set in the early 1900's, this made him like her more.