• Member Since 16th Jan, 2012
  • offline last seen Jun 22nd, 2019

Ex-Nihilos


More Blog Posts56

  • 574 weeks
    Site! Why You Keep Changing?

    Wow, fimfiction has changed quite a bit since my humble beginning where I first drunkenly stepped through the door and picked up a keyboard. It's been a crazy time reading the writing here and it still captivates me to find such outstanding writers that join together to write about ponies. I can only wish to be half as good a writer as many people here. A mastery of spelling and forming sentences

    Read More

    4 comments · 1,049 views
  • 586 weeks
    Potential new project preview

    Stupid idiot, what were you thinking taking in this crying, pooping, miserable little mess he thought bitterly to himself. It’s been two days since he found the little mongrel and she wouldn’t stop making noise. Always flailing her hooves around like a fool, either laughing or wailing at the top of her longs. He hadn’t managed to sleep in all that time. I’m hungry she’d cry out in

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    10 comments · 1,017 views
  • 591 weeks
    To Followers, favorites, and everything in between

    Hello everyone, I guess it's been awhile since last I said anything. My abrupt return was pretty much just a sudden appearance before a disappearance. I put out a chapter, perhaps half-cocked, and went back to lurking in the shadows with the light of the computer monitor illuminating me. Rather melodramatic but hey I'm in one of those moods, and what a mood it is.

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    21 comments · 892 views
  • 597 weeks
    The Great return

    Dressed in the rags, your wonderful neighborhood tramp Ex Nihilos welcomes you into his humble abode. What was once a wondrous apartment with furniture and wondrous cultural icons like an 'I can haz cheezburgr' posts and an Beatles poster with a coffee stain on the corner now lays barren. A homeless man sleeps in a corner and a condemned sign sits in the meager trashcan.

    Read More

    18 comments · 778 views
  • 604 weeks
    Back from Star Wars Celebration VI

    Got to meet Anthony Daniels, Seth Green, Timothy Zahn, and attended a bunch of writer's seminars.

    Oh also spend my entire life savings on Star Wars stuff but totally worth it!

    And now back to College and writing.

    16 comments · 726 views
Aug
2nd
2012

Author's Confession · 6:13pm Aug 2nd, 2012

This is a rather serious blog with no bearings upon any story I do. Just something I wanted to get off my back and have it stare me in the face when I come to this site- a constant reminder for myself to give me pause.

If seriousness isn’t your thing then you shouldn’t pay any attention to this- carry on you wayward son and all that, I’ll have the next chapter of Rorschach in Equestria done with Sunday being my deadline.

For those who care.

I want to make a confession: I am a compulsive liar.

I’m not sure where it began or why I started to lie but as far back as I can remember I’ve always embellished the truth in some way or another, made up stories to make myself more interesting than what I really am. It isn’t a conscious effort, not anymore at least. Over the years it’s just become so easy to lie, and as my lies grow and expand they become entire stories. I truly begin to wonder what the truth was and what the lies I told myself and others were. Sometimes lying was fun, making up stories until they were too fantastic to believe, and other times it was out of confrontation, lying to keep face when being judged or berated.

Nowadays, I’m ashamed to say I’m a very good liar. I can make up an entire story for you on the spot and have you believe every word of it, I know this because I’ve done it so many times before to impress my friends, my family, and strangers. Even when I’ve been caught in a lie it doesn’t seem to bother me anymore, all it takes is more lies to seal the wound my one discovery had created. I’ve had too much practice than I care for and recently I’ve started to change that. For the lies I’ve already told there’s no way I can take them all back but I force myself to tell the truth now, as often as I can and correcting my own attempts at lying. It isn’t as easy as it seems, not for a man who’s spent his entire life building himself on a shaky pyramid of lies and deceit.

Even now, I find myself still telling lies on the small things, details that don’t matter at all yet still I have the need to embellish them. At least my lies don’t harm anyone except myself any more, and it helps now that I have an outlet.

When I write I have control over what I say and do: I make the conscious choice to lie where it is to my advantage and to speak the truth where it is appropriate. And like it or not I’ve only allowed myself the truth in my writing when it did not pertain to the genre of fiction, what I write here on my blog is the truth. I don’t want to lie, even though I have the urge to do so, because it’s just too easy now to hide behind a screen and tell you what I might be, too easy to fall back into that pit of continuous lies. Awkward moments in my life, my instances of being drunk, that time I fell out of a tree, and my love of exaggerating my weird southern/english accent into phonetic words is all fact. How trustworthy my own word can be… well, only you can decide how far to trust the words of a man who sees it fit to lie before the truth has caught up with his mind. I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t, sometimes I don’t even trust my own mind about what’s the truth and what’s fantasy.

Perhaps the reason I’m a writer is because I’m a very good liar. I can’t say for certain, a writer’s opinion on writing changes on who you ask. Lord Byron once wrote, “And, after all, what is a lie? Tis’ but the truth in Masquerade.” While Ralph Waldo Emerson believed that, “Every violation of truth is not only a sort of suicide in the liar, but is a stab at the health of human society.” I’ve known these two quotes for some time, forgetting and remembering them as time moved on, trying to decide where I stood in my stance upon lying. Was it so bad to lie when the lie is so meaningless that no one would care of its existence, or is even the smallest lie a slippery slow down into a web of deceit? It’s only recently that I’ve realized that both Byron and Emerson are right, that lying is a two sided blade.

I can tell myself that lies are merely the truth in some form of guise and that it was just a convenience to lie, but I cannot hide the fact that it hurts when I’ve realized what lies I’ve told my friends, how undeserving I was of their trust, and how pathetic it is that I can’t even stop myself from lying. What keeps me up at night isn’t the fear of having my lies discovered now, it’s the act of lying that haunts me- that moment where I told the lie sticks in my mind like that one embarrassing moment from high school that makes you cringe even to this day. For the true friends I’ve made over the years, the ones who’ve put up with my antics and randomness as well as my faults, my lies to them bare down on my thoughts more than any worry about finances or academics.

To those I’ve lied to in the past, tricked into believing false lives I lived, I don’t expect your forgiveness and even if you offered it to me, I wouldn’t forgive myself. What I do want to say is that never have I meant to harm anyone with my lies. I never intend to hurt anyone but myself when I lie. Looking back it feel so selfish to think that it was only myself that I was harming when I told a lie, like a child whose scared of punishment and blames the spilled mess on the dog I didn’t seem to realize it was the dog that would get beaten and not me.

I bring this all up because I have to. Writing is the only place I have left where all I can say is the truth, the whole truth, and not the embellished lies that escape me like hot air when I talk. Even then I’m not without fault, I catch myself typing out a lie so many times it scares me. I hope that someday I can change, that I can tell you that you can trust every word I say when I talk to you in person or in instant messaging, but for now... well, take things with a hint of salt as they say.

That’s it, thanks for your time,

Ex-Nihilos

Simple facts of truth:

I live in Tennessee
I say mate, 'drop the 'g in 'ing, and y'all all in one go.
I'm pretty sure my family is insane.
I had my first taste of beer when I was 13.


----------------------------------------------

Wow this post was serious, needs more Derpy.

DERPY!

Report Ex-Nihilos · 813 views ·
Comments ( 20 )

265148 that scene from My Little Pony especially hit home for me. When I first watched it when it came onto youtube I had to stop watching the episode after seeing Applejack like that.

It was a full half hour before I could bring myself to keep watching to the end.

I understand the compulsion to lie probably as much as you. It took me a long time to move past that and I eventually did. Part of the reason I was able to pull myself out of the rut was my writing. I respect you for announcing this and wish I had the guts to do so when I started my climb out.

Hm....It is a good and bad thing. It's a part of human nature to lie (at least how you said to try and save face or being judged). But when you write a story, or when anyone else writes a story based off of something, or something original, couldn't it be considered lying as well? If you can weave a story solid enough and believable enough for me to agree and follow it, well kudos to you then. You know how to work the person's (or audience's) mind and how to make you'r point of view right. It's natural for humans to lie, call out lies, tell truths, etc.

I have to say they both could be considered neutral things. Without lying, there is no truth, without truth, there is no lying, because it couldn't be right in the first place? Hell, lying could even save your life sometime (don;t ask me how, but there are scenarios that could happen). But If you want to catch yourself and stop, then go ahead, nothing wrong with that. But always just remember how WELL you can do it, in case you actually NEED to do it. Hell, lie about a lot of things, most are little, and because it simply saves time and effort on my part, and doesn't really harm anything. I've also lied to make things stall out longer when I should of told the truth and ended it there, but oh well, both ended the same way anyway.


Just my two cents...

I, too, am a Compulsive Liar, it's hard for me to not lie on a conversation, i always tell some without noticing it until the talk is over and it's too late to tell the other what was a lie and what was the truth, here, on the other hand, i can think carefully what i am writting and can be a more honest person, but in an actual face to face conversation...

Don't hate the lying Ex, embrace it. Love it. Come to the dark side, come to my side.

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Hm, I can see where you are coming from. Lieing is more common than you would think, though: I have hardly any friends that never lie, only my most naive friend have I not yet caught sugarcoating, embelleshing or twisting the truth in any way - and she got in trouble more than once for always being so completely honest.

Lieing is part of human nature, and I myself feel no remorse lieing to an authority or a stranger, especially if it helps and protects me and those I care for, though I try to avoid lieing to my friends where I can. After all, finding out you have been lied to by someone you love is the most disgusting, painful feeling of betrayal you can feel. And it has hit me sunny-side-up in the face more than once in the past two years. Don't beat yourself up over it, people change over time. You are a better person now. I would not suggest coming clean to your friends with this if you do not want to hurt them, it may be better to sustain the smaller lies and refrain from telling new ones that to shatter their image of you.

One more thing: Since you started this off telling us you are a compulsive liar, I am faced with the dilemma of wether or not to believe the entirety of this blogpost. We have, after all, no way of telling what really is the truth over the Internet.

PS: I do agree, fabricating a "backstory" for yourself, or inventing some interesting adventures you had, is far too easy.

Well, it's interesting to hear that. I don't know what that's like because I am the complete opposite. I can't tell a convincing lie to save my life. Very interesting power you have. It could be helpful at some point. I know there are times it could have helped me. Anyway, I just have one question. Why, in the name of all that is good, did you put your location on the interwebs?

I don't believe that you are a liar. I think you made it up.

I know this must've been hard for you to come out like that. Confessing about a lie you've told can be one of the most difficult things a person can do, so you have my respect for doing this. Hope this gets easier for you in the future, and may the truth set you free.

Regardless of how truthful you may wish to be, there's still going to be one lie you'll be forced tell for the rest of your days.
Ther fact the you write stories about a hero and his adventures in pony land.

I used to lie like that a lot, it was coupled with my kleptomaniac side... :pinkiecrazy: I'm all better though :pinkiesmile:

The most unbiased yet meaningful definition of lying I ever heard was: The attempt to control someone else's reality.

I know it's a hard habit to get out of, it's one that I'm trying to do as well. But just as lying came so easily, you'll learn that telling the truth can start to come out just as easily.

Lying on small things can grow into lying on serious matters. You had a lot of guts to tell us this. For that, I show you respect.:twilightsmile:

265278 At this point in time its not exactly a well guarded secret. If you're able to pick me out of the millions that live in the deep south than that is pretty damn good.

265322 That'll be a story to tell the kids... "Yes children, your father used to write pony fan fiction when he was in college; stop snickering or no dinner for you."

265255 To start this out I wanted to be clear with the term I would call myself and I cannot take it back, it is on impulse that I lie. And you are right, how trustworthy can you take a man who knows he's a liar, it's like a catch-22.

I do not have much to say. For there is not much I could possibly say that others haven't. I will simply acknowledge what you have told us and applaud you for your courage. And I will also sympathize with you.

Thought becomes words becomes action becomes deeds becomes character. Good luck my friend.:eeyup:

I can relate. I'm not compulsive, but I'm damn good when I want to be. I also tend to use misdirection rather than lie outright, but really that's just an academic distinction. I don't think that you should never lie, but when it matters, when it's someone you love.They do deserve the truth.
I'm confident that you can do it and honestly that's one of the themes in the Dresden Files that I love the most: you are what you do. Not what you have done, not what you might do. You have free will and the right to use it. The future is yours to shape, don't ever think that you can't do it, Ex.


On a somewhat less serious note, congrats, we're neighbors! Sort of. I only live a state away from you, and, yes, I say y'all too. Ain't no shame in that, brother.

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