Fourth entry, also complete.

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Text everywhere. White as snow. Assorted images scattered about. Intermittent pulses of energy course through my veins to move my fingers in a rhythmic fashion. Ideas formed from the text. More ideas formed from the assorted images. Ideas course through my brain and to the computer screen. People find them entertaining. Some don't.

I am sitting down on my beloved office chair, with my faithful desktop computer at my front. I feel terribly pampered, my parents still provide and shelter me, even at the age of 18. Their basement is my sanctuary. I have my whole life in here, yet something feels missing. Could it be a woman? No, I decided on just giving up on futile attempts at getting a woman long ago. Could it be a material thing? No, I've bought all I want. Could it be a life outside my basement fortress? Possibly.

I haven't ventured outside my home for the heck of it in a long time. Could it be too much of a long time? Could my deliberate barricade of the outside world actually be detrimental to me? Let's find out.

And so, I open the chest in the corner. A slight amount of dust and dirt has settled on it. I extract its contents; jeans, socks, shoes, a band shirt, a leather jacked and a pocketbook pertaining to the various points of interest in the small town of Riverside. I get dressed and place the pocketbook in my breast pocket for easy access. I exit my basement dwelling, tell my parents about what I'm going to do, and leave.

The shock on their faces is burned into my memory. They've known me for being a basement dweller all my life, so naturally being the caring parents they were, wished me good luck and farewell.

I take a leisurely stroll from my house to the local mall. Suggestive stares from various women phase through me. Friendly greetings from the townsfolk beam through me. My stoic expression is fooling them all. Like a product advertised in an infomercial that guarantees it'll help you lose weight, it fools them.

I keep walking, only one crossing before I'm at the mall, there is a sort of giant floor fan I missed, so when I walked over it my pocketbook falls out of my breast pocket, so I pick it up.

Then it happens.

Wham.

A semi collides my hip head on. I fly 10 feet up and hit the ground hard. I slowly fade out of consciousness and feel blood trickle from my head. Pain shoots through my entire body; I don't deserve this.

I fade in and out of consciousness. Visions of doctors, masks, knives, my loved ones and even the forum I've frequented flow through my river of thought.

I then find myself in a mystifying dream, faced with an ultimatum I've been thinking on for too long.

"Will I keep living my life like this? Will I keep wasting away every moment of my existence on superfluous things such as social acceptance on the internet? Will I keep living life like a spineless maggot worth nothing more than a dime to society?"

Absolutely not.

I then emerge from my coma. I feel like a million dollars.

I finish up everything I've ever wanted to do with my life. I make an animation, I start working out, I start socializing, I take up playing the guitar and I start building character.

Before I know it, in a few months time my life has been rebuilt to something that has only existed in my dreams.

I have more friends than I've ever had. I am in a relationship. I am finally popular on the internet for something other than forum posts, and I'm a better person overall.

NOT TO MENTION I OWN A MANSION, HAVE TEN FERRARIS AND GET LAID 24/7

But that doesn't actually happen.

No, it gets much worse from this standpoint. It seems to me that I never was in a coma, I never got in a major vehicular accident, and all that talk about me fixing my life was just me trying to cope a failed event. I just blacked out, and here I am now, doing nothing about my failure of an existence. I'm just sitting on my computer yet again, typing away another blog about my existence.

Text everywhere. White as snow. Assorted images scattered about. Intermittent pulses of energy course through my veins to move my fingers in a rhythmic fashion. Ideas formed from the text. More ideas formed from the assorted images. Ideas course through my brain and to the computer screen. People sympathize. Some don't. In fact, some write death threats for me. Some egg me on to commit suicide.

So, what about it? What about my pointless existence? What happens next? What is it that I can actually do for myself? You know what? Fuck it, I'm joining the army. If I'm too much of a wuss to kill myself or fix myself, I'm going to let a crazed Iraqi run up to me and let off his suicide bomb, and I'll go out in flames, with the world remembering me as the man who failed to stop a suicide bomber in the president's presence.

Yes, what a pleasant way to die.

And what a coincidence, I've received my monthly subscription to Playboy in the mail, oh and there's something under it.

Interesting...

I've just been drafted into the army. Apparently, all those hours of playing that army themed FPS and my high rank has caught the attention of the army. I look forward to this experience, I'll count the other nerds the come with me in the bus. I'll pose their corpses in a humorous manner once they're terminated. Take pictures. The internet will love me even more.

I wait a few days, and after exactly one week after I received the letter, a green bus parks outside my home. Excellent, I'm heading on over to Iraq apparently, to fight the Stupid War. I bid my parents farewell and grab my bag, heading on over to the bus.

Fast forward six months. I've been promoted to Private First Class. Today is the day I live.

I get on the convoy, and am being deployed to a terrorist hotspot. This scene is a carbon copy of all those war movies you see. I'm in a enclosed area, with muscular men who can't seem to stop cursing surrounding me, and a nerd thrown in for good measure. I expected more than one nerd.

I step outside, and immediately I hear an explosion. Time slows and I see dust and debris flying everywhere. My teammates run to the designated terrorist building and start loading their guns. I find myself doing the same as well.

I just got dropped into a really generic FPS.

I enter the building and use a table for cover. I expect to do one of those bad-ass war deeds that grampas tell their grandkids over by a fireplace and a rocking chair.

But that doesn't happen.

Instead, once I run out of cover and start shooting clunks of pure, unadulterated metal into the chests of those Arabs, I happen to shoot a suicide bomber, and the bomb goes off.

I feel the heat radiating from the explosion, I feel shrapnel flying towards me and stabbing me like a dozen knives. It's worse than being circumcised without anesthesia. It's worse than a root canal without anesthesia. It's worse than being socked in the balls.

But unlike all of those, the pain goes away in an instant.

When you die.

Text everywhere. White as snow. Assorted images scattered about. Intermittent pulses of energy course through my veins to move my fingers in a rhythmic fashion. Ideas formed from the text. More ideas formed from the assorted images. Ideas course through my brain and to the computer screen. People find them entertaining. Some don't.

I've just blacked out again. But this time, I'm certain what I've experienced was real.

The sheer thought of me surviving such an incident is astonishing. I start to see the meaning in life now that I've experienced being in a near-death situation. I feel like I should live life like how those lead characters in sitcoms do. It's only the right thing to do.

And in ten years time, I've met a woman, my closest friends, and I've lived.

Lived for the first time in my life.