Night thoughts: purpose · 8:45am Jun 6th, 2021
Sometimes, I feel like I'm spreading myself far too thin. That I'm being far too ambitious, and not putting enough time into thinking about what the impacts of what I do ultimately will be.
It's nights like tonight where I feel like I have to take a step back, and look at what I'm doing. What I've been doing. Is it still worth doing? For what reasons am I doing it? What impact does it have on me? Or on those around me?
It's like I'm trying to be multiple people at once.
I've built a pretty clear identity for myself here at this point. I'm the guy who writes weird stuff in the name of frying brain cells. But there's more than just that. I write more than just comedy.
Pony-Me has been, and likely will be, my magnum-opus. Though I haven't said it so directly until now, I feel like I've only been chasing after its success for the past four years. Trying to recapture what it felt like to both write it, and see others enjoy reading it.
Maybe that's one of the reasons why I've been trying to reboot it. Scratch that, it probably is. The same goes for Splintershard. Two stories, written with an intent to surpass my previous best.
And yet, I wonder if it's worth it still. I wonder if these summer tech projects I set myself upon are worth it. What do I get out of working on these things? Will it last? Or will it just be another one-off thing that I'll eventually forget even existed?
I told myself almost a month ago now that I was going to recreate a logic board for a floppy drive. At most, I might gain some knowledge in how to better draw schematics. At least, I'll have another thing I can put on my shelf for show.
And what of my stories? I've mentioned that two of them were started with the intent to chase after the success of something I wrote back in 2017. What about the other two?
What If shifts with the times. I'm happy to keep it going, even when sometimes it devolves into nothing but an endless cycle of inside-jokes. It gives me a place to test the waters with new ideas. New writing styles. Perhaps even new identities.
The fourth story, which I'll just call "Crew-T" for simplicity's sake, is pretty much exactly what it looks like. A parody story, meant to trash on anything and everything it touches. I'm fine with that existing as well, though I don't update it nearly as much as I probably should.
I mentioned earlier that I feel like I'm trying to be too many people at once. I really do mean it. It always feels like some part of me or another is burnt-out. It just depends on the day. Now, I'm not saying that I have DID (Dissociative Identity Disorder). I'm just saying that I've tried my best to keep parts of my life cleanly separated.
On many days, it's the part of me that likes to write that feels burnt-out. I take a look at what I've written. What I have planned. Think about what motivates me. And ultimately, for a time, find that there's nothing. It feels like I've failed the readers sometimes. I used to be able to write a chapter a week, on a predictable rotation. Even a chapter a day at one point in time. Now, though? Most of the time, I can at best choke out a chapter per month for my two "flagship" stories. The ideas are still there, and so is the want to make these chapters the best that they can be. It's just that the motivation to do it... hasn't exactly been as present.
I do a lot of things to pass the time. I tinker with computer parts, watch Youtube, write, record my own videos, and so on. But then I remember that I'm now in college. Though I'm riding on a scholarship, it's going to eventually run out. I'll need to get a job someday soon. Free time will dry up. I'll have to start picking my priorities more carefully.
I still want to do all of these things - writing, recording, tinkering - but deep down, I know that it's only a matter of time before I have no time for these things. Or at least, that's how it feels like. Even now, in the middle of summer break, the time when I have all the time in the world, my mind is clouded by these thoughts. I wonder if I'll ever surpass that story I wrote as a one-off four years ago. The one that I latched onto and eventually drove into the ground with failed sequels. I wonder if I'm still good enough; if I still hold up to my own standards of quality, or if I'm only doing it to chase the brief moments of fame I'd experienced back then. That I shouldn't be getting the sort of attention I get now for what I post. I want to say that it's imposter syndrome, but I'm not entirely sure. I know I shouldn't put much attention into likes, or what's on the featured list. But it becomes frustrating sometimes. It feels like I'm grasping at the fringes of relevancy. I joke about "stealing clout" from bigger and more well-known folks from time to time, but I really do feel, deep down, like I'm not doing nearly enough to deserve what I've gotten from all of you. I want to write more, but hesitation holds me back.
I'm sure this is selfish to say this, but I don't want to fade away. I want to leave my mark on the world, for the better. I want to make people smile. Brighten their day, and so much more.
Yet I feel like I can never achieve that to the extent that I want to. So I try my best.
But best doesn't always hold up when it feels like it's becoming a job.
That's what writing swings into sometimes for me these days. Most of the time, I do still genuinely enjoy writing what I write. But on some days, maybe even this one, I feel more like I'm writing for the sake of getting something out there. To fill a quota, to put it.
And this extends to the other personas I've built up for myself.
On Youtube, I've cast myself as a variety content creator. I genuinely want to lean more into the technology side of things, but the parts I have are limited, and the market for computer parts is absolutely horrendous right now when it comes to pricing. I do what I can, but I fall back far too often on easier-to-make content such as Minecraft streams on Twitch and story readings on Youtube. Again, going back to the whole "hobby feels more like a job" thing.
Yet, ironically enough, though I've already said that I've spread myself thin, it's through the use of additional personas through alt accounts that I've more recently found new enjoyment in things. Especially so in the writing world.
My first alt, TechnoNerd, is already somewhat well-known by readers of What If. It's where I dump most of my comedy one-shots these days. As implied by the similarity in username, TechnoNerd is just me under a different name. There's hardly any difference beyond that.
The second alt, however, remains shrouded in mystery. It is through this that I've found new enjoyment in writing. It's the account I run my experiments on - experiments in writing style, experiments in content, even an experiment in self-disguise. Though only four stories have been published under that account, I've found it enjoyable to keep it active, even after my primary experiment has succeeded.
In the end, though, all of these personas I've shrouded myself in are still me. Extensions of me, maybe even amplifications of certain aspects of myself, but ultimately still a part of me. Every so often, one part of me burns out. Often for the most trivial of reasons. Like now. It's been a slow-grind, but for the past year or so now, with the pandemic and all, everything has melded together into one endless "week". Everything is repetitive. Nothing is new anymore. It's why I made my second alt account that I mentioned earlier. It's something new and exciting. A shift away from what I saw was familiar.
There probably isn't much structure to this blog post considering how it's now 2:16 in the morning as of me writing this. I guess now's as good a time as any to bring this up.
Back in 2019, I think I was going through the same thing with trying to figure out if what I was doing was still worth it. At the time, I concluded that it wasn't worth it, and so I prepared to write my final story. It was going to be called "One More Time", focusing on the theme of leaving something behind, possibly forever. To this day, I'm still not 100% sure what it was that pulled me back from making that move, but two things stood out especially: The first, funnily enough, was writers' block. Yes, I never finished "One More Time". I couldn't think of any way to actually get enough of it written to get the idea across. I think I ended up posting the little I did write into "What If" as one of my unfinished fic entries. The second was once again a re-evaluation.
What was I going to do after Fimfiction? Again, tinkering with computers gets expensive, and... well, just like now, I didn't have a job. My parents always told me to focus on academics. That I could get through college on scholarships if I did well enough, and not to worry about jobs until later. I'm certainly riding on scholarships now thanks to that mindset, but everything beyond college is still at best a blurred mess to me. I don't know what my own future has in store. I don't know what I want to do for a job. Computer Engineering is a somewhat general field for both hardware and software. I chose it because I wanted to have more job options when the time came.
I guess, one of the biggest points in my re-evaluation of myself that led to me deciding to stick around was that writing has always been one of my "backup plans", so to say. Pick up as many skills as you can, and that way you'll always have something to fall back on if something goes wrong. That's another mindset I've picked up over the years. That, and I remembered that I also have friends here. Friends that I might never actually meet, but friends nonetheless. I don't like to abandon friends, and it hurts when I have to part ways for good with someone. With that in mind, I don't think I'll be thinking of leaving again anytime soon.
Even then, my main point in all of this drivel is that I have no idea what I'm doing. I don't know what'll come next, what I want to do when I do get a job, or anything of the sort. At best, I have a foggy picture. At worst, it's pitch-black. I've picked up so many things as hobbies across the years that when (forcibly by the pandemic and school breaks) given time to do all of them, I've instead chosen to do none of them. Even now, during summer break, with no deadlines or anything, I'm constantly debating whether or not it's worth it to keep pushing on with the things I do. And when I do do things, it always feels the same as the hundreds of other times I've done it. I'm a jack of all trades, master of some, but all I want to really do right now is slam my face into the keyboard.
I guess, to sum up even the summary, I feel like I have no purpose. Like I'm still lost in the woods, trying to find my way out.
I'll see ya 'round, whether it be as 'Techie in my serious works, Tonkus in my other stuff, or _______, working on the next experiment.
Thank you for reading my bedtime thoughts. I needed to get this off my chest. I joke about my lack of updates far too much.
I'm glad to see you get this off your chest. I may joke around and not take things seriously all the time, but I do know that sometimes there are times to get serious and talk about things that ails you, things that plague your thoughts and bring you down, things that may leave you confused or scared for the future. I'm not really sure where I'm going with this considering I got distracted with something midway through writing this, but either way, glad to see you getting this off your chest
5530907
Thank you.