It's my movie, but I don't know how long it's been since I've played lead in a scene. Instead, I'm mostly waiting in the wings – doing my loner things – and that's become most of my life. The only time I get screen time is when I'm in a supporting role or extra in other people's movies.

The loner things may be scenes of their own. But then they would be the final scenes in my movie. All the major action and events are done. All the points of my movie have been made. These last minor scenes are just a coda, a way to end the film. How the film will end.

Funny, but on my last bike ride, my iPod shuffle was playing a lot of moody indie movie-ending songs, I felt.

I remember reflecting on a film called "Auto Focus," about the Bob Crane ("Hogan's Heroes") murder, and how the end of my film might be modeled on what director Paul Schrader did. He portrayed the decline and things going out of control by washing scenes out and using shaky hand-held shots to convey the feeling.

The end of my film may not be so dramatic. No descent. OK, there still may be one final climax at the very end of my film, but these scenes leading up to that probably should have a feel of calm, reflective isolation, with maybe a few indication of cracks in the ice wall. Like how in neurotically keeping track of my expenses – if not obsessive-compulsive – I'm buying a bottle of liquor every other day, every two days at most.

I don't think I want to die of liver or kidney failure. Sounds too drawn out. But maybe it gets drawn out because people end up going to the hospital, trying to survive. Trying to survive? Then why were they alcoholics? Alcoholics run the likely risk of dying! I know cases are more complicated than that, I don't necessarily mean to sound unsympathetic.

I won't go to a hospital. I knew what I was doing. I already have one symptom of having frequent pressure in my lower back. But even this is probably just early stages, but possibly, depending on my individual health, already past the point of no return.

If I went to the doctor now, I may simply be advised to stop drinking if I want to live, or it may be so bad that I may be hospitalized to turn things around. Who knows? But I won't go to a hospital and I won't see a doctor. If something goes wrong, no one will know about it until I physically can't go on. That's still a while a way, I shouldn't wonder.

It also feels like the cowardly way to go. If I have a point, then I need to make the point. If the point of my life is to achieve a suicide, then I need to focus on that. But maybe I am a coward and will wait to let alcohol take its course, or worse, stop drinking.

Finally, I don't think I'll quit my job without a reason. Granted the simplest of reasons is enough to send me over. Although that feeling may change tomorrow when I go back to work. I just had two days off – what people normally get, called a "week end", I think – and that has eased my negativity towards work. And I have another two days off at the end of this week, which has been unheard of recently. I wonder who's been taking those shifts.

It is a ridiculous job. One and a half persons, the copy editors, are the gatekeeper and monitor of everyone else's work – people pulling stories from the international wires, the people coming with local news, and the page designers.

I learned recently that a copy editor at a legitimate newspaper only checks English – grammar, spelling, consistency – and by the time a news story reaches the copy editor, it has already been through several editors. And every story gets actually read.

Instead, we have to supervise and monitor the international desk by being the ones responsible for there being no repeat stories in today's paper or from yesterday's paper. That's supposed to be their job. With one and a half copy editors, we don't read international stories. We only have time for a spell check and a format scan and then send them to the designers.

We have to supervise and monitor the designers and point out errors in the design elements. That should be their job. You don't need to know English to see that a line is wrong, or a byline font is wrong.

And don't get me started on the local news stories. Local news stories we have to read, but with one and a half copy editors, we still can't keep articles going to print that sound like they were written by English students. We can correct the English, but we don't have time to re-write the style, so there's a lot of stilted phrasings.

I don't sweat it anymore. I don't read our newspaper looking for mistakes that the copy editors missed. I read the local stories for amusement. Now, our newspaper is Taiwan's Leading Chinglish-Language Newspaper Since 1952.