Hello, my name is Døden. I hope this message finds you well. So you have found me, at last. While there are few mediums which can bridge the planes of our existence, it seems the internet is the most powerful, bringing unprecedented efficiency to the exchange of interplanar information between humans and the denizens of the Necropolis alike. Long gone are the days of human sacrifice, necromancy, and organizing seances to commune with the dead. Such ostentatious methods are too overblown anyways, wouldn't you agree? 

Communication preferences aside, needless to say the revolution of the internet has completely descended onto the mortal world and the Necropolis alike. Even this purgatory could not escape from the acceleration of technological advances and its misappropriation by the domineering forces of free-enterprise: monsters and fiends who once fueled the stuff of nightmares are now subdued by workplace hierarchies, fiery lakes are paved over for gray corporate offices, and torture chambers are converted to claustrophobic studio apartments with exorbitant rents. Subjugating all is the corporatocracy of the Ministry of Death, a conglomerate that has constructed an innovative credit and debt-based monetary system which cannibalizes on the working class by skewing the accumulation of wealth into the hands of the few. We've finally engineered the perfect system to dispossess the residents of Hell from their former humanity without the need for impalement or pitchforks. Pretty ingenious, and actually quite lucrative! This is something you will get to experience too one day, if you are so lucky.

But it all begs the question - when the Ministry demands from me a full work day, and with each passing year the features which once marked me as a human fade away, why open a silly "e-commerce" shop in the little spare time that I have? 

Truthfully, it is hard to remember what being human felt like. But beyond the few distant memories, sights, and sounds a pervading feeling remains - that I did once exist, rather, I do exist still, despite the absurdity of my circumstances, and these expressions of my self and my art no matter how trivial will remain to cement the fact that I was here. Even if one day this little "e-commerce" shop ceases to exist, when the magical links and portals which teleport you here across the web come to a close - there will be an artifact of my presence which remains, in an email notification, a text message alert, or your credit card bill (thank you). It will evidence that you and I communed together here, and we were able to foster a small connection which brought us together - no human sacrifice required. Now that is a nice thought, isn't it?

With all that said, welcome to my store. I hope you find what you are looking for.

From what I have learned, there is success in failure. Now, not all oxymoronic phrases are inherently deep or merit nuanced discussion, but let me make my case for this one.

A personal hero of mine is none other than famed Necropolis legend the Boogeyman. Previously employed by the Ministry to scare human children for bad behavior, he has since made a career pivot to pursue his passion for golf, which is par for the course for men his age.

Now, the Boogeyman has earned an unfortunate reputation since. He is certainly no pro, and each field he has played has effectively become a metaphorical graveyard for the sport as his performance killed any enthusiasm for golf that fans might have previously had. He's been nicknamed the "Bogey-man", and even though scoring a bogey would actually be a career high for the guy, he is keen to lose the title. He may be the subject of some mockery, but there is something more special going on here.

There have been many times in life where I have held myself back out of fear of failure. I have denied myself opportunities and justified it by saying that it would not be worth the embarrassment of failing. Learn guitar, and suck at it? Nope, I’ll just listen. Apply for a new job? I'll get trounced in the interview, and someone else is probably more qualified. Transform my life for the better? I think I’d rather stick to what I know - there is comfort in what's familiar.

But I’ve learned the hard way that life stagnates when you live like this. Contrary to what you might initially think things can’t change without taking a chance. It becomes alarming and even lonely as the world evolves without you with the march of time, and the gap between you and who you want to be seemingly widens. Soon you might feel left behind. You could be tempted to ask “How could this be? I haven’t failed at anything ever!” But the simple answer would be that you haven’t even succeeded at failing.

I was, and still am, scared of failure. I have bombed many interviews. I have made bad art. I have failed countless times. But I have learned a lot from it, and there is success just in that. Mr. Bogey may hang his golfing cap one day, but he would have retired a better golfer than when he started - despite all the failures along the way.

As of late, the Ministry has been quite keen to capitalize on the latest human invention of artificial intelligence. Suddenly, there is a need for the integration of this technology across all layers of the company - streamlining workflows, optimizing processes, enhancing efficiencies, and so on and so forth. It may even be so intelligent to one day automate the real churns of life - the mundane inconveniences of constructing language, forming interpersonal relationships, or building a sense of agency through expressions of self or other creative works. I would finally not be burdened by the need to think, and the annoying weight of thought would be lifted from my absent mind. Instead, I would just ask questions - how did anything ever get done before, and how did we survive as long as we did without AI? We may very well soon forget, and perhaps the answer to the question will only ever exist as a controlled output of a machine learning model. 

To have successfully fragmented their humanity across an infinite series of static data points, greedily devoured and ingested by behemoth data centers, would be the human’s terminal crowning achievement. With every challenge solved for and obstacle eradicated, they'd no longer have a reason to live.

Sacrifices, sacrifices. It seems inevitable that in life, we all must make sacrifices. They don't require esoteric rituals, live animals, ornate daggers or melted red candles…they can be the quiet but deliberate decisions we choose to make every day.

Over the course of the past year, I have dedicated a significant portion of my time to the Ministry. I will reluctantly admit that I let myself be engrossed in the repugnant concept of…building a career. But with great dedication and persistence, my work has slowly been recognized, and for my efforts the Ministry has rewarded me with a promotion to a new role more voracious than the last. It consumes me each day, and I recover my body through the night only for it to feast on me again the following morning. As I sprawl into bed, wearing my wrinkled iron-free shirt and worn pleated slacks, my bones ache in new places, and echoes of notification trills and dings terrorize my respite. Before I relinquish my mind to the haze of sleep I silently whisper…senior associate, senior associate at the Ministry of Death. 

The truth is, I have been blind to the sacrifices I made for this job. I miss the simple bliss of a home cooked meal that a microwaved dinner can only cheaply imitate. I miss the laughter and companionship of friends who gave life warmth on a cold evening out together. Now the sterile glow of my laptop screen keeps me company late in the dark as I receive (ding!) the warm regards of strangers over cold emails. 

But what I miss most is who I used to be. Because for all my ambitions over a goal so arbitrary as a successful career, I gave my work ethic, my discipline, my creativity - the best parts of myself - to this job. Now, I have nothing left to sacrifice for the things I love most in this world.

So I ask you, friend, what have you been sacrificing?