We're All Drifting Ever Onwards Into the Void · 4:38am Aug 18th, 2020
So, uh... I haven't posted a blog in 4 months. That's basically unprecedented from me in the nearly 8 years I've been on this site. I think the most I've gone before is 2, but even then I'd find something to talk about and make my presence known once more on this site we all love. This time? Nothing. And now, with my 26th birthday coming on Saturday, I'm sitting here in the basement of my parents' house, watching the clock tick closer to midnight, and I find myself grappling with a sense of listless lethargy that I just can't seem to shake. Perhaps that's why I'm writing this blog, as a form of catharsis or just some way to shake the feelings away. I'm a writer, and if I can write for my own enjoyment, I can write to clear my mind. So that's what this blog is going to be; some self-indulgent blarghing to sort of clear my head and maybe stop myself from falling into a deeper funk as the wonders of living in the flashback scene of the post-apocalyptic movie we're all hurtling towards takes its toll. One elusive pink individual I have the fortune of knowing and talking to on occasion is probably well known for his own long blarghs of this sort, and while I don't have the patience to link dozens of things in this like he does, I will say that the occasional reflective blogs he puts out are what put the idea to write something like this in my head. So, if it works for him (I hope), then maybe it'll work for me.
For those of you probably holding your breath for any bad news I'm about to drop, here's the tl;dr for everything below: No, I'm not going anywhere or considering giving up writing at all. I long for the day when I have the time to get back into writing with vigor and frenzy again. I just don't have it right now, and simply not being able to write as I like and am used to has put me in a little funk that I hope to shake soon.
Now, for the real meat of this blog. Forewarning: it's probably going to be a little bit rambly. As I'm sitting here writing this, I don't really know where it's going to go. So consider yourself warned.
Where to begin? Well, let's start with my seemingly apparent lack of interaction on this site. I'm sure many of you know that isn't explicitly true; I've been regularly posting and updating my CYOA story, Unshaken, as I've had the time and energy to write for it. So far I've mostly been able to stick to posting updates on Mondays and Fridays, though that isn't always the case, as some days I just am so swamped with work and things I need to do that when I finally do have some free time, I'd rather spend it playing video games as opposed to doing something productive. I'm also certainly not inactive on my discord server, where those of you who are a part of that know that I'm regularly active there talking with people. But I do mean my lack of activity when it comes to blogging, which I consider my window to talk to everyone who follows me on the site and isn't on my discord, and in terms of new stories and content.
And... it's been frustrating, I'll put it that way. I'm stuck at home, finishing off my master's degree in biomedical engineering through online courses, and apart from coursework, you would expect that I'd have plenty of time to write. But I think the social distancing that we've been living under for 5 months now, coupled with being unable to tear my eyes away from the trainwreck of America's political administration and everything that it has done to both lengthen and worsen the pandemic, has been doing its best to put me into some sort of vegetative state. The world is all doom and gloom, with a very real chance that the nation I live in will only live to see the 250th anniversary of its founding as a twisted and sickly mockery of what it should be, and like an animal expecting to die I've just been hiding in my hole in the basement, counting down the minutes and waiting for the clock to strike midnight on human civilization. It's not like I'm going anywhere any time soon, really. Not physically, and not on a more meta level with my life. Sure, I'll have my degree in a few weeks... but good luck to me trying to find a job while America is still locked in the unrelenting vice grip of this virus. And I'll turn 26 in just a few days, but the only thing I accomplished between then and my 25th birthday is the addition of weight and the continued slow, but inevitable, decay of my body. I've been fortunate enough to not suffer from mental health issues or depression, and more than fortunate enough to be able to rely on a family that is certainly not lacking in the means to provide for its members and their health (unlike so many families whose lives were turned upside down in the pandemic), but when all you really can do with your time is just think about how everything is slowly circling the drain, getting closer to the point of no return, that dark, gurgling void, it's hard to not feel gloomy and exhausted. To use another metaphor, these past few months I've felt like a glider that lost its updraft and is searching for the next one, knowing that sure, I can glide for a long time... but sooner or later, I need a boost, something to get me going again, or I'm going to crash back down to earth.
But there isn't an updraft; there hasn't been one for a few months. And as I've been sitting here, hopelessly and fruitlessly waiting for things to finally get better, my interest in my passion, the ability to take ideas from my mind and put them onto paper, has waned too. I was supposed to be writing the third installment in my sci-fi series, Two Thousand Miles, but I've barely done any of that. I've written only 3 chapters in the 4 months since the pandemic began in earnest, and I'm not even all that pleased with those three chapters. If I was in my prime, I could write a chapter every 2 weeks, which means I should have had at least 8 chapters written by now. But I'm not in my prime, and I don't have 8 chapters written. 2017 was the year where I peaked, where I wrote story after story and all of them were good. One of them is placed in the top 10 stories on this entire damn site by its rating, at the time of this blog. This year, I've written two stories and updated another, all three of which did/are doing well, but they aren't the smash hits that I could seemingly put out one after the other in 2017. It makes me feel listless, and when you have nearly a thousand followers but don't get a tenth of that number in favorites and likes when you release a story, you feel like you're doing something wrong. It's just hard to explain.
Ech. I'm going to stop that right there. I hate lamenting about reception to stories, because it makes me feel like some kind of selfish prick feeling entitled to views and praise. But I will still say that I feel that the 24 of 2017 was much better than the 24 of 2020, and I don't know what I can do to put that lightning back in the bottle. Maybe I'll figure it out someday. Hopefully soon.
At the very least, I can say that my quarantine hasn't been entirely useless/listless. I joined the writing team at a mod that you may be familiar with, and I wrote somewhere around 80,000 words of event localization for the massive post-war Changeling victory update that was released for the mod in July. Honestly, getting involved in that mod has been both a good and a bad thing. Good because I greatly enjoy creating war stories (that shouldn't be new to any of you who follow me), and getting to turn those stories into events that people will see while playing a My Little Pony mod for a World War II game has been a thrill. Pax Chrysalia Redux was very well received, and seeing the constant praise for the story and characters I crafted gave me a nice warm feeling in my tummy. But on the other hand, joining it was bad because those 80,000 words of story came at the expense of writing 80,000 words of stories to publish here on fimfic. So 24 the fimfic writer has languished while 24 the mod developer has ascended. And the worst part is... I'd rather keep writing for Equestria at War than beating my head against TTM3, praying that I'll have a breakthrough in some way that will let me get this damn story written. I even took a month and a half break from EaW after finishing and publishing that update so I could focus on writing stuff for Fimfic and I just... haven't. I wrote one chapter of TTM3. That's it. And I feel awful that I didn't push myself to get more done. I should have gotten more done. I just couldn't put myself in motion to do it. And now I'm fully aware and regretful of the fact that I know I'm not going to have TTM3 done and ready for publishing at the beginning of 2021. Who knows if I'll finally get back in the groove to get it ready for 2022, if we even all survive that long. I can only hope so.
But I will finish TTM3. I just don't know when. This isn't me abandoning the story. I'm just doing my best to work through a funk and a terrible block, but I know one day I'll get through it and write like I used to. It just doesn't feel like it's going to happen while I'm stuck at my parents' house, waiting out the pandemic.
On top of my struggles as an author, my personal life has been somewhat listless, for the reasons I described before, but also for things happening with family. My brother was home from California to hang around Pennsylvania for a few weeks; I hadn't seen him since the beginning of the year, and he'll be on a plane heading back to California come morning, and I probably won't see him again until the end of 2020. We've been close our whole lives, and sometimes you don't really realize how special that bond is until you don't get the chance to renew it on a frequent basis. My sister suffered a microtear in her intestines that probably would have killed her if her husband didn't manage to force her to go to the ER to get it looked at. Even then, injuries like that have something like a 50% survival rate, with early detection and treatment being absolutely critical to improving that outcome. If my sister had waited any longer, I doubt I'd still have a sister by now. And my grandpa has started falling on occasion, and once an elderly person starts falling, you know it's always a risk of it happening again, and it getting worse. Not only that, but he has pretty bad COPD from spending his entire life working in steel mills. If he somehow caught coronavirus, I have little doubt in my mind that it would kill him. I'm not ready to let go of him, not yet, and the fear that at any moment, he could be taken from me by this pandemic terrifies me. My dad has also smoked throughout his life, and has been adamant that if he caught coronavirus and it got to the point where his best chance for survival was to be put on a ventilator, he would refuse it. And that's the terror of this pandemic, and studying in the medical field where you get a deep appreciation for how bad different diseases are and how they can kill you: I know that I'm highly unlikely to get seriously ill if I caught COVID, but I know that there are people in my family that would die if they caught it. And sometimes, that'll keep you up at night.
I'm not sure what else I should say, or what else I feel like saying. I just wanted to say something and hope that it helps. I don't know if it helped or not; maybe I'll figure that out later. But perhaps I do feel better at least saying something that, in person, I wouldn't be able to, introverted as I am.
I'm going to go to sleep now. Maybe the world will be better when I wake up. I doubt it will.
Thank you for reading.
24
It seems your pen name is a misnomer, 26th Pegasus.
hugs
The U.S.A. really is a mess, and that's putting it lightly. Have you considered moving to a different country?
It's definitely okay to be feeling listless, aimless, and anything else right now. No one really knows what to do it seems. :C
Don't worry about those numbers. I mean, they're apparently down across the board, I'm finding the same thing happening. Fandom's not gone or dying, but it's definitely cooled off.
5337864
Not possible. Americans are banned from the world cuz we done screwed ourselves over. :(
5337942
What?
5337975
If you're from the US, you cannot travel to more than a handful of countries in the world right now, because of how poorly we've handled the pandemic in our country. We're stuck here.
5338160
Oh.
Yeah, I know what you mean. As I write this my mom is in the other room napping on the couch before she drives home, and she's 70 years old with asthma. I'm a bit terrified for her.
Red pill?
I feel your pain, granted I have a job, but lately my brain has been pulling the trick of keeping me up at night contemplating every mistake and missed opportunity in my life (at the tender age of nearly 29) not to mention how my internet proclivities and my love for pastel ponies could be considered warning signs for darker implications. Just started reading your story about Hurricane and Silver Sword, and I find myself wishing I had the guts to pull a Tom Sawyer and just pack up and leave, but I'm a self-diagnosed coward who will probably land in a protective ward when my parents inevitably pass. No plans, no goals, a dead-end job, knowledge that if I was dropped into the midst of actual danger where my decisions were literally life and death, I'd curl up and pray to the Griffons (literal or figurative) not to hurt me.