The short answer is, no.
It’s not me. Not in the true sense. Though I can definitively say that the protagonist in ‘do while true’ comes about from a ‘there but for the grace of God, go I’ arrangement. That’s where the book is coming from. It’s not a matter of getting Julian and setting him up in hell and beating him up and seeing how far it can go. It’s the point that, at every turn, he can make a decision, a conscious decision, to do or not do something.
It’s as if he has free-will, yet refuses to exercise it. He is trapped, for sure, but the trap is actually of his own making. He has the power to escape, he either doesn’t know how, doesn’t believe he can or, which is the scariest, he doesn’t want to. The helplessness, the resignation, the feeling of one’s potential slowly dripping away with nothing to show for it, that’s real.
It’s brutally real. And it hurts. Sure, there’s the physical pain of staying up until three in the morning trying desperately to finish off that thing that ought to only take five minutes and is due the next day and was sprung upon the team with a day’s notice. The aching back, the sandpapered eyes and double-vision, the neck bones that sing out as you take a ten second break to moan and roll your head – they’re all there and they hurt.
But it’s the realisation that you won’t get that time back that hurts the most. All of those things you could have done, should have done, really, really ought to have done because they were important and would have had effects lasting long into the future. Those moments you could have spent with your family, teaching and learning and mucking about. The experiences you could have turned into memories, and memories you could have turned into stories.
They don’t exist. They had potential to, but now they never will. Not because you were lazy, though that’s a possibility. Not because you were neglectful. Because you diligently fulfilled your promise, trading your time and sanity for the security of a house, food and a bank account. The pain comes from losing something that you never had.
So no, Julian isn’t me. But, damn if I don’t know exactly who he is.