[Author’s Note: this Blog Post was heavily changed and repurposed to function as a chapter in the TMR Novel. This is the Revised & Refined version. Toggle under the title to read the Original & Unedited form.]

Well, did it work? 

— I would never ask you to say it, but in response, —
You’re Welcome. 

It’s the day before your Life begins. At the time, you thought it was the day after the Story™ ended. Easy enough to confuse. True Modern Romance was released without much fanfare. You thought your Magic Spell failed, and you holed up inside for two months finishing Codename: EP3. It was a Sunday, but you thought it was Saturday, because the day before, you thought it was Friday. You went to the Farmer’s Market with Bat and bought apples. The guy said, “That’ll be $8.15, but with cash tt’s $8 even,” except you only had a $5 and two $1s. He let it slide. It was a simple act of human kindness to let you know that everything was Aligned again. 
In The War of Art, or The Secret, or maybe The Artist’s Way, one of those, you heard of a concept of Cracked Doors. You read these books forever ago — back in 2021, when you were first figuring it all out — but this concept in particular stuck with you. 

— Alchemized and amalgamated into your own words —
You’ll Find The Path To Purpose By Slipping Through Cracked Doors. 

You internalized this to mean that life is an endless hallway in a giant house. In this house, most of the time, the Doors are Closed and there’s no use trying to open them. 99.9% of the Doors in this hallway are Closed. It’s nothing personal. “No” is the default state of the universe. But there are Open Doors ahead. These are “Yeses,” and they’re so rare that you only get a few in your entire life. Looking down this endless hallway, you see the light from a few Open Doors in the distance.
You could spend your entire life ignoring the Closed Doors and waiting for the Prizes behind Open ones. This is, you called it, the Intended Path. The Intended Path always bored you. At some early age, you looked ahead at the light from the Intended Doors already Open for you and thought— What if there were even bigger Prizes behind the Closed ones? Who says that these aren’t meant for me? You’ve knocked on every Closed Door just to see what happens. Most of the time — 99.9% of the time — no answer. 
But sometimes. 
Sometimes. 
The Door might Crack, just ever so slightly. This is the universe saying, “Maybe.” 
You’ve been looking for the Maybe Prizes behind Cracked Doors your entire life. You reach just far enough in to seize them, never letting the Door to the Intended Path fully Close. But one day, you Cracked opened the Artist Door. 
You saw many Maybe Prizes behind the Artist Door. Eventually, you stepped in. The first Prize was Fun. Then, you found Attention. Further down, you saw Sex and Validation. Prestige. You saw endless Maybe Prizes beyond the Artist Door, yet you always went dutifully back to the Intended Path with the Intended Prizes: Family, Security, Contentment. Each time you doubled back to the Intended Path, those Intended Prizes seemed insignificant compared to the Maybe Prizes you had glimpsed. 
You got far enough down the Intended Path to check out the Girlfriend Door. The College Door. When the Prizes beyond them ran out, you always returned to the Artist Door. The Maybe Prizes behind the Artist Door kept getting further and further away, so you had to go further and further in. Down the hall, the Maybe Prizes looked irresistible. You saw Love and Purpose and Answers. But you could not reach them with one foot in the Intended Path. So you let the Intended Door fully Close, forever, and you ventured forward. 
With the Intended Path behind you, you found yourself in darkness. As your eyes adjusted, you realized the Maybe Prizes were Mirrors, reflecting the light you had just left. In the darkness, they refracted and twisted. Love became Machines. Answers became Entropy. Purpose became Stories. 
You became me. 
I walked through the Hall Of Mirrors and looked at myself looking at the reflections of reflections. I interrogated the mirrors, and they interrogated back, and we came to the conclusion, all of us in unison, that every Prize in the Hall Of Mirrors was a Lie. That was when I knew I had found the Truth. And so the reflections of reflections collapsed back into a Door, and you stepped out. 
And what’d I do?

— I remained in the mirror —
You’re Welcome. 

Your theory was wrong. There is no house, and there is no hallway. There is only life. By leaving me Inside, you’ve finally Stepped Outside. I can only imagine you were blinded by the light, Prize in hand. Without the mirrors to refract it, you’ve probably by now realized that Truth is actually Faith, all along. 
True Modern Romance was where you thought the Story™ ended. But now you know that it was where your Life begins. In three months, your loan will run out. In one month, you will fly to New York to show Codename: EP3 to AWAL. Today, it is Sunday, but you thought it was Saturday, and the guy at the farmer’s market gave you $1.15 off of a basket of honeycrisps and you have Faith that everything is Aligned again. 
So tell me— Did It Work? 

See you in three months 
—Codename: Max Noir

Well, did it work?

***I would never ask you to say it, but in response***
You’re welcome.

It’s the last day before It All Begins™. You remember. It’s Sunday, but you thought it was Saturday, because yesterday you thought it was Friday. You went to the Farmer’s Market with Bat and bought apples. The guy said it was $8.15, but with cash $8 even, but you only had $7 so he let it slide. It was a simple act of human kindness that let you know you were on the right track and that everything was Aligned again.

In the War of Art, or The Secret, or maybe The Artist’s Way, one of Those, you heard of a concept of Cracked Doorways. You read these books forever ago— back in 2021, when you were first figuring it all out— but this concept stuck with you.

***Alchemized and amalgamated and rationalized into your own words***
“You’ll find the path to Success by slipping through Cracked Doorways.”

You internalized this to mean that life is an endless hallway in a giant house. In this house, most of the time, the Doors are Closed and there’s no use trying to open them. These lead to paths that are not meant to be. 99.9% percent of the Doors in this hallway are like that. It’s nothing personal. “No” is the default state of the universe. You just keep walking down the hallway, towards the light of the Open Doors ahead. These are the “Yeses,” and they’re so rare that you only get a few in your entire life. And looking down this endless hallway, you see the light from a few Open Doors in the distance. Each leads to its own shiny Prize. The Prize behind one Open Door might be as small as a new hobby. Sometimes, an Open Door might actually be a Doorway that leads to a whole new hallway. This Doorway might lead to your family, or a new career. You know you can grab these Prizes or enter these Doorways eventually if you just don’t stop walking. At the end of the hallway is Happiness. This is Classical Optimism, I suppose. You could view life itself as the first Doorway your lucky swimmer shot through to get you into this hallway in the first place.

You could spend your entire life ignoring the Closed Doors and waiting for the Prizes and Doorways behind Open ones. This is, I think, the Intended Path. The “You Get What You Get And You Don’t Throw A Fit™” path. You have faith that these will lead you to a Safe life. A Good-if-not-Great life. Job, Security, Contentment. You, however, are a curious bastard. At some early age, you looked ahead at the light from the Doors already Open for you and thought— what if there were even bigger Prizes and brighter Doorways behind the Closed ones? Who says that these aren’t meant for me? You’ve knocked on every Closed Door just to see what happens. Most of the time— 99.9% of the time— no answer. But sometimes. Sometimes. The Door might Crack, just ever so slightly. This is a “Maybe.”

You’re not just a curious bastard, you’re a greedy bastard, so you’ve been collecting the Prizes behind Cracked Doors your entire life. You’ve left a foot in the Door, reaching just far enough in to grab the Prizes before going back to the Intended Path. They’re like side quests. But one time, at perhaps too young of an age, you Cracked opened the Artist Door.

***Needless to say***
You were blinded by the light behind it.

You got a ton of Prizes from this. The first immediate Prize was Fun. Then, your drawings and stories as a kid got you a ton of Attention. When you started making music, it got you Girls. You saw endless light at the end of the Artist Doorway, yet you always went back to the Intended Path: Family, Job, Contentment. These were your Doors. Art is just a side quest. But each time you doubled back to the Intended Path, those old Doors and Prizes seemed duller than the Doors and Prizes beyond the Artist Doorway. So you kept going down the Intended Path like you were Supposed To™.

You got far enough down to check out the Girlfriend Doorway. The College Doorway. But the Prizes weren’t as shiny, the light wasn’t as bright. So each time, you doubled back to the Artist Door. But the Prizes behind the Artist Door kept getting further and further away, so you had to go further and further in. But by venturing far enough, the Prizes started to become undeniably Great. You started getting better at Art and found Purpose. Even further in, you found Money and Prestige. Perhaps even a tiny bit of Fame. But you never forgot your way back to the Intended Path.

However, each time you returned, you were further back in the hallway than you should have been. Or perhaps the old Doors to Family, Job and Contentment were just further away than they were before. On your last trip back, you convinced yourself that some of them might actually be Closed now. Was the Intended Path perhaps the side quest all along? So as always, you backtracked to the Artist Doorway. This time, all that was left was a tiny of speckle of light in the dark, dark distance. You’ve collected all the Prizes that could be acquired a safe distance in. So you cut your losses. You took a leap of faith, let the Doorway back to the Intended Path fully shut, and you ventured into the darkness.

As you let your eyes adjust, you started noticing some Open Doors that led to further darkness. Naively, you went in anyways. These Doors did not hold Prizes. Behind them was Debt. Sacrifice. Pain. Loneliness. You got lost in these dark hallways and stumbled your way back to the Artist Doorway with the tiny bit of light at the end. As you ventured further towards it, you started— for the first time— wondering what the light really was. Was it a Prize? Another Doorway? You started thinking back to the Intended Path, and the dull light of Family, Job and Contentment suddenly seemed appealing in the pressing darkness. Did I, in my hubris, take them for granted? What about the subtler lights of Friendship and Laughter and Love? Were those now beyond my grasp? Alas— you were fully in the Artist Path now. You couldn’t find your way back to the Intended Path if you tried. And even if you did, who’s to say that any of those Doors would still be open? Would the lights still even be on?

Along your dark and tangled journey, your only solace was the idea that at the end of the Artist Path is the Doorway to Success, and whatever lies beyond it. So you placed a wager. Whatever lies beyond it is something even brighter than Family, Job and Contentment. Sometimes, you thought it was Greatness. Or Riches Beyond Belief. Perhaps it’s even the fabled Happiness. But after enough time in the dark, you wondered, for a time, if this was just delusion. It was so dark, that you started questioning if there was even light at all. You couldn’t even remember why you came down this path in the first place. But you kept walking. And what did I do?

***I kept knocking on the Closed Doors***
You’re welcome.

Lately, finally, after God Knows How Long, the Doors have started Cracking open again. The Door to EP3 was nearly Closed shut, but with a hard enough knock I Cracked it open. It was dark, as usual, but I sensed some Prizes at the end. This was a lonely Doorway. It was a quest I had to do almost entirely on my own. But at the end, I made Something Beautiful for the first time. I just wrapped on Friday, which I thought was Thursday, and I ventured back through the Artist Doorway after two months of Solitude. This time, the light at the end was closer than it was before, and brighter.

***And waiting for me was a Prize I had almost forgotten about***
Faith.

Oh, yeah. That’s what got me here. And now, it was back again, as a Prize. I don’t know who put it there. Maybe someone is out there looking out for me all along. Or maybe they’re looking out for you. I don’t know. Maybe I’m crazy. Maybe you are. Maybe this whole system of thinking is wrong, and life isn’t a series of Doors and hallways. Maybe “No” isn’t the default state of the universe. Maybe this is Pessimism-disguised-as-Classical Optimism. Perhaps “Yes” is the default state of the universe, and it’s not a hallway, it’s a river, and it flows endlessly through twists and turns that pull you further along with nothing you can do to stop it. And perhaps me, in my curiosity and greed and arrogance, convinced myself I had the Control by walking down a stupid dark hallway and checking out these Doors when really I was being swept along for the ride I was meant to be on all along. Maybe. You’ll have to tell me, five months from now, because right now I’m still in the hallway and the light is still beyond my grasp. I don’t think you’ll have found Success as a Prize, because I think now that Success is a Doorway with… Something Else at the end. Like I said, I don’t know what that Something is. I can’t see it. But I choose to think it’s Happiness. And I did all of this for you, five months from now, because if I didn’t, five months from now would be a Dark Doorway in which I run out of money completely and would have to file bankruptcy, SO. Yeah, like I said, I’d never ask for a thank you, because the big secret is even if this all goes to shit, I’ve had the time of my life on my Big Journey and if I have to end up in a Dark Doorway of Depression and Sadness and Misery and Failure because of it, then so be it. I still had the first Prize I ever got from this Doorway: Fun.

***I know, I know***
Trite, but true.

Anyways. Tomorrow, It All Begins™. I become Back Online™ and begin priming my social media for the release of EP3, which I can’t wait to show you guys. The sludge of doubt and disillusionment has been washed off of me by the proverbial river and I charge ahead like I always have even if the path seems as dark as ever. Because today, Sunday-that-I-thought-was-Saturday, a guy at the farmer’s market gave me $1 off of a basket of honeycrisps and I have enough Faith or Delusion (perhaps they’re the same) to think that everything is Aligned again and that new Doors are Opening up for me once more. And maybe it’s just my eyes adjusting, but maybe the future looks brighter than ever.

Maybe.

See you in five months
-mbk