Reminiscing results in depressing nights

Working late at night again, with pushy and incompetent clients who always need translation at the last minute.

Bored with teley last night, and I actually turned it off. I didn't turn it on again. Tonight, I thought that I'd do the same, but then, The Great Gatsby was on one of the movie channels (a great surprise for me to see such thing here). Then, I quickly sank in... back into the old days when I used to find comfort and relief in reading and watching old movies. I kept asking myself how I could have abandoned that life.

Then, I took out the book to read it again for a bit (the movie was nice enough with a good soundtrack but the book is still better). A few paragraphs later, there was relief, because reading those paragraphs has become surreal in my current life. The characters in the book seem more real than people I know in flesh and blood. I instantly see what's happened to me again.

I get mixed up. I keep living my life between fiction and reality. When the fiction is too good, it's easy to mistake it for the reality. It's like The Catcher in the Rye. I still remember the first time I read it at school. I had no idea what it was about at first; I read, and it was the fatest read ever, for some kid who was just begining to learn to appreciate another culture (and perhaps abandoning his own for good). I suppose I tried too hard to understand, and I was dragged in by the words and the imagery presented in the book. And I haven't really gotten out from there.

No matter how real my life seems, I still have the ability to retreat into the fictional one as soon as undesirable (or even desirable) things happen. As a consequence, I run away to another place, thinking it's the fictional world. Yet, it isn't it. I'm just not courageous enough to face things. I like life, when it's simple, minimal. Fiction can be easily modified with a few strokes. Life needs more than that, and it is never modified to anyone's satisfaction.