Entry posted by fishers64
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On BZPower, this is isn't evident, but in real life, I am a liar. By all appearances, I am naturally good at it. Either that, or my parents and friends are all bad at noticing them. I am very good at hiding things, half-truths, and all forms of illusionry, easily keeping track of what people know about me with the greatest of ease...and what they don't.
It's even evident in how my eyes work. I struggle with holding eye contact with anyone for more than a few seconds, and my eyes are prone to darting around the room. It's been so evident that my dad has called me "shifty-eyed [fishers]".
On BZPower, I don't lie. At least, not unless it's in a Mafia game or something like that. To lie, one must have reason to lie, and on BZPower, I don't really have a reason. But in real life, it's much easier to just avoid risking other people's opposition to whatever you happen to be doing.
That's where my writing career started - telling wild tales to my mom in answer to the "how was school today?" question in the back of the car. I didn't want to tell her that my teacher had chained me to my assignments and took away my recess, so I spun outlandish yarns. My mom actually believed me for several months.
As I grew up, lies became my tool to get around the dreaded parental "no". Some things could not be opened using this tool of my trade, and I chafed and gritted my teeth. And so I became an adult, and lying became my true and present winner's ball. It was what allowed me to stay on BZPower for years, stay up late at night, and accomplish shopping trips, see movies, and even meet a BZPower member without too much trouble. It was the things I did not and could not (or I thought I could not) lie about that always held me back.
I do not prefer to tell people things. I am a very private person. I would like people to leave me alone most of the time, and just let me do whatever - at least in real life. This either leaves me stuck in a routine or playing the illusion card, and then promptly blaming the other people for their opposition if the illusion didn't fly.
This is how I was wrong.
It's also how things finally managed to go right.
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What brought this on, fishers?
Recently I decided to expand my illusion circle to include the classes I was taking at college. I finally stopped nursing the futile hope that I was going to get a computer science degree - some bad grades provided the perfect rationale there. I concluded that I had any number of initiatives that deserved my full attention, and that I should focus on those in order to earn money to get myself off the ground. If those didn't work, I was getting an English degree, and use that to put myself together.
Yesterday, this illusion bubble popped. I knew it was coming since the day before, since my mom learned earlier than my dad did, and I knew that she would crack. My mom, for all of her finer attributes - let's just say I didn't get the lying from her. In fact, my talents don't make much sense with my genetics. I feel like a freak accident. 
I expected terrible things to happen. None of them did - my dad just wrote me a nasty letter - which I filed (I felt like framing it, and I may frame it yet - it's so wrong it's funny) and told me that I would have to ride bus/bike to school. I worked my way through the problem...only to have that punishment rescinded this morning. There was no other punishments.
My dad told me that he was giving up on me and getting out of my way. He said that he still doesn't believe that my projects or my writing will ever make me any money, but it was clear that I wasn't going to go with his program, so he wasn't going to bother anymore.
In essence, I got exactly what I wanted. I finally got them to get out of my way. They have been a thorn in my side ever since I left high school, and the result has been mixed. Granted, I have some very valuable skills now that I need that I wouldn't have had otherwise, but I would be graduating from college right now if it wasn't for them, and their attachment to me getting a computer science degree, a futile hope.
Any attachment to an impossibility will be denied. I would have been happy to serve them the degree if I could - I aim to please, and I even wanted the degree for that exact reason - but there was no pushing me through all of that coursework I didn't have the skill for. And I have this obnoxious tendency to never give up on anything, which kept nursing this hope. So I have no doubt - part of this is on me.
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"No more lies, fishers. If you tell just one more lie, we're kicking you out of the house."
I told them about BZPower and nothing happened. I haven't told them about my Bionicle collection yet, but my mom knows about it, sort of.
So I haven't really lost anything. If I tell them the truth, they aren't going to kill me anymore.
The only thing I have lost is the ability to lie, which, given the effects on my world are zero, shouldn't even BE a loss. But I still feel it, because the truth always comes with a cost. It's going to be a very long time before I can feel comfortable doing BZPower without having a program to cover the window if my parents walk by. Three years of habit doesn't fall overnight. But I'm confident that I will have to fix this tendency of mine - eventually my plans require me to work with a team, and I'm not going to be able to do that if I keep doing this, even if it did work here.
I wish I could pull a big important lesson out of this, but alas, without my skill I wouldn't even be typing this, and I would not have my semester the way I have it now. So I think perhaps it's better for my blog readers to come to their own vindictive conclusions or lack thereof.
tl:dr - fishers lied and got away with it, but she can't lie anymore as a result and feels weird.
Now how am I going to tell my parents I am ordering two Bionicle books, an Elves book, a book on music law, and two music CDs off of Amazon? 
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