Stay Golden, Pony-Boy

 

Well, Hello Again!

What happened, where I went, and what I'm doing now:

I know, I know, I know. It's literally been years since I posted a single, solitary item, vanished, and now I'm back again wanting to carry on like normal.

I know. You don't have to look at me like that. I promise, it'll all make sense.

Anyway. Here's the thing - I'm not the greatest at commitment. There, I said it. It's now out in the open, and I must live with the fact that should anyone ever (like, ever) come across this little blog of mine, they'll know this awful truth about me. Gasp. But I feel as though I owe it to myself to be entirely truthful in at least one aspect of my life. And yes, it just so happens to be the virtual part that no one will ever know about. Mwua-ha-ha. 

For the record, a lot has happened in that massive ten-year leap in time between my activity here to help explain why I vanished. Maybe not a lot that should have happened, but nevertheless a lot more than I'd anticipated. Surprisingly a pandemic that shut down the country was actually one of the things I'd had in mind, but like, as a joke. Like Dwight Schrute level of joking, 'ya know? "There's too many people on this earth, we need a new plague." THAT kind of joke. Fucking shocked, if I may say, to have that happen instead of go to college, move out, get married, have kids. But I digress, things happened.

The basic gist is this: I got heavily invested in co-writing projects with people (cough, roleplaying) that fell through (more like they crashed and burned to a crisp) which did not do any favors for my mental health. I developed a sort of hermitized way of life where I practically lived in my room on my computer, which led to a fairly bad dependency that affected my social life and only increased my hermit lifestyle. Eventually, I spiraled into a weird depression, and rarely left my house. Lob on top of that, I scrapped every single one of my own personal projects in favor of writing, of all things - big gulp, everyone - fanfiction. 

...I know.

Ten years is a long, long, long time spent writing things that I was increasingly unhappy with, having uninteresting conversations with shifty people about projects that made me miserable in the long run, and ultimately, I wasted a fuckton of time doing something that drew me further and further into my own head instead of into a place that I wanted to be. So, there's that.

Almost five years ago, though, I took a step in the right direction. I got a big girl job. Three years ago, I quit going online at all. I let my computer practically turn into a dust bunny and die. I severed contact with the people that were making me unhappy. I moved up and then around in my job. And then, about two years ago, I got my first real car (that bad baby is almost paid off, too, score). And then, almost a year ago, I found something that'd been eluding me for a really long time that spurred me into purchasing a brand-new computer: Inspiration. 

Don't you fucking roll your eyes.

No, seriously! I got inspired to create things that were all mine! True, they were shit ideas, or recycled variations of projects from years ago, but they were mine. I wasn't writing bullshit fanfiction or weird co-op pieces that made me want to rip my hair out due to the constraints and general rhetoric fatigue. And considering how much time I've spent being unhappy, it doesn't really seem all that bad to be enjoying writing things that aren't the absolute best. For me, it feels like I'm doing something. It feels like I'm not wasting my time. And it feels good to be committing to something for a change, even if it's for me.

Yes! Commitment!

So, now you know as much as you need to know. 

Was it all bad? Absolutely not. There were some days that were pretty great. And in retrospect now that I'm super-mega-ultra better, I really don't think I'd change a thing. I'm happy to have had that experience, so I can be even more grateful for how much I've changed as a person and improved my 

situation and my outlook on life. I'm better at filtering what influences me, and I've learned to not take life so seriously. It's so much shorter than we realize, but it's never too late to start committing to enjoying it.

See what I did there? Commitment.