Invisible Existence

I tend to think that when it comes to people, there aren't too many things that 'no one does' or 'no one thinks'.  This comes from the fact that from very early on in my life, people would assume so many things about me that just weren't true. This often seemed to be based on the presupposition that no one would ever do certain things or could be a certain way.  Which I guess was either based on omnipresent social propaganda or assuming everyone was like themselves or their friend group.

Anyway, that being a recurring motif in my life just really drove home to me just how much people assume about others based on what I could only conclude must be spurious preconceptions. This may also have been my first introduction to the idea of 'proof by counterexample' in formal logic.  To me it showed that there was...a brittleness to universal statements, to the words 'all' or 'never'.  That a single creature as insignificant as myself was all that was needed to disprove such statements.

Maybe this is also part of the reason I don't really write self-inserts.  Even if I was willing to disclose personal details about myself, I think a lot of people wouldn't find that character believable?  Like, not only would said character not be the most interesting (as any character sufficiently like me would actively avoid vivid drama like the coward I am), but I really suspect that people would just find the character completely unrealistic too lol.  I mean, at least if I go by the things I've heard people around me say for my entire life.  According to those statements, I literally don't exist.

Some Stories I've Read

Some fiction I've read and enjoyed recently (eg. in the past few years):

• The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson
• The Martian, Artemis, and Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir
• The Sympathizer (and it's sequel, The Committed) by Viet Thanh Nguyen
• The Inheritance Trilogy by N.K. Jemisin
• The Broken Earth Trilogy by N.K. Jemisin
• The Binti Trilogy by Nnedi Okorafor
• The Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy by Cixin Liu
• Supernova Era by Cixin Liu 
• The Aftermath Trilogy by Chuck Wendig
• Invasive by Chuck Wendig
• The new Thrawn trilogy (Thrawn, Thrawn: Alliances, Thrawn: Treason) by Timothy Zahn 
•  Queen's Shadow by E.K. Johnston
• Maul: Lockdown by Joe Schrieber
• Darth Maul: Shadow Hunter by Michael Reaves
• The Wrath of Maul by Ryder Windham
• Cobalt Squadron by Elizabeth Wein
• Phasma by Delilah S. Dawson
• Rashomon by Ryunosuke Akutagawa
• In a Grove by Ryunosuke Akutagawa

I'm a huge scifi and fantasy fan, hence why the only books on this list that are not scifi or fantasy are the Viet Thanh Nguyen novels.  Though I'm not sure I would characterize the short stories I read by Ryunosuke as fantasy exactly despite some of the more fantastical elements of In a Grove (I don't remember Rashomon well, so I should probably read it again sometime), but I also have difficulty classifying his writing.  I've also read a lot of Star Wars novels.  Like...a lot of them. This doesn't even list all the ones I've read recently.

I also tend to like reading books in a series and multiple books by the same author.  And this is not an exhaustive list of everything I've read or even enjoyed in the last few years.  

This list is to remind me that my memory is a liar when it says I don't read much anymore, haha.  I still do dislike those times when I don't feel sufficiently motivated to read anything, but those times are certainly not all of the time.