Thursday, January 10, 2013

Where Has the Nate Gone?

Compiling the Post Archive was an interesting experience. In the process of which I found myself reading the old posts I used to write, or rather, the old posts I have written. For a long time I would think back on a lot of these posts and, without reading them, would judge them as terrible, instantly awful, amateurish trash. A lot like how I look back on old stories. 

Well, someone should kick me in the balls, because I deserve it. Both of them. Right now. Line up. No iron-toes.

You see I discovered something tonight. I discovered that I didn't suck one tiny little bit. That's not even me being arrogant, that's me being honest and a little bit, y'know, healthy for once in my life. There are some awful things about them, not all of them, but some of them have some obvious and unarguably awful bits mostly from not being copy edited. Not even remotely. But other than a few typos and one sentence that really isn't logical at all I wrote some pretty damn good stuff. Sure, maybe they could be fixed up, and maybe someday I will fix them up. But right now, I'm actually really proud of myself. I did a good job. Good job, Old Me.

So what the hell happened? I mean I know kinda what happened, especially with some aspects of the writing. I started being a little aware of what was legal and tried to not just yoink people's artwork for the sake of a sight gag. That was kind of a blow to my style. Maybe I should start using sight gags again. What else happened? A change in subject matter is the most obvious thing. I stopped doing things for the past year or so. I haven't really played video games, I haven't really watched an anime, I did watch The Spectacular Spider-Man in about three days but I never did anything about that. I never wrote about it. In the past I was always blogging about what I was doing with my time, even without really mentioning it.

When I was playing Animal Crossing I was writing about Animal Crossing. When I heard about the new Super Smash Bros. I was writing about Super Smash Bros.. That hasn't been going on, really. Nope. Nothing. I've kind of just been sulking my life away and getting fat and doing nothing. No reading, no games, no anything. No socializing. Nope. Just becoming a miserable old crab.

The worst part of it all is that I've been feeling the sharp decline in my writing, not just in my blogs but in all aspects of my literature. Poof. *Snap fingers.* Gone. It's just gotten me more down, and being down got me more worse, and being more worse got me more down. This unhealthy toilet flush of death. I wish I'd seen it when there was still time to plunge me out.

I think the most apparent change, the thing that really did me in with my writing, and with everything, was when I published. I suddenly decided I had to be something I wasn't, something I'm not, and something I'm never going to be. Actually, today has been quite the revealing day for me. Even write now for this blog, and for the previous post I had written today, I'm doing something I have never done with my writing and I think it's helping. I'm saying out loud what I want to write as I'm writing it. Not writing and then reading ahead, but just saying words and hitting keys. I think it's helping. I think it's forcing me to find my voice again. My voice is very important, I realize now. I--Let's start a new paragraph here.

My voice wasn't something I had ever felt was particularly strong. In my mind I was always bland, boring, depressed, washed-out, nobody. Nobody wanted to hang out with me, I had nothing worth saying, I was just this boring blob of gross. Reading my previous posts today I heard myself. I heard my voice. It was there. It was strong. Very strong. And it showed my why people liked my writing as much as they did. Coming into those posts as a stranger now, I liked them. Not even out of nostalgia or out of "Hey, I did that, it must be amazing." No. This was simple, stumbling upon an Internet thing and enjoying the way it was told. I never understood before that I had that ability.

I guess I must have created some kind of self-fulfilled prophecy. I saw myself as a talentless, voiceless goof, I let other people and other writers--ones I wasn't even directly speaking to--convince me that I was a voiceless, talentless goof. That I was doing everything the wrong way. So I became what I saw myself as. I became the voiceless, talentless goof.

Instead of creating my own stuff I dumped into the Archive. I was feeling the pressures all around me, all over the place, pushing down from everywhere. I'm twenty-fucking-one and living in my parent's house. My girlfriend works full time. I bring in no money. I need to start bringing in money. That's what I was thinking. For me it became a matter of "I will do all this easy quick-cash stuff now, then I can afford to develop myself and my passion later."

Now don't get me wrong. I am certainly passionate about 2-Bit, and I am most certainly not closing the doors there. But there will be a change to the way I go about it, and the frequency with which I do. I'm not going to exhaust and depress myself with that anymore. It's not about... it became about the money, and that killed me. So I need to stop making it about the money. I need to become who I was. Because that person was a way better person.

I need to stop beating myself up and convincing myself that I don't have the ability, because I clearly do. It's obviously there. I can do this. And probably most importantly, I need to stop browsing Internet forums. The most obvious of these would be Absolute Write which has been absolute wrong for my development as a human being, as a writer, as a boyfriend. Just, wrong. Bad. Ruined me. So, no more of that. Gotta. Gotta quit the forums. They aren't happy anymore for me. Forums in general don't appear to be healthy environments these days, and I was letting all that Internet bull crap sink into my head. So no more of that. Maybe not cold-turkey, but definitely not hot-chicken.

I don't really think anyone is gonna wanna read this post, but it's being posted anyway. It's long, it's rambling, it's more for my benefit than anyone else's. That's okay. That's almost how it should be. Writing, and blogging, they used to be therapeutic. And when they were like that for me, everyone else enjoyed what I created. What I had to say. So I can't let the stresses come in anymore. Gotta keep them out. Bad stresses.

So to wrap this up, I guess I'm gonna tie it off with a moral of sorts. And this can qualify as the tl;dr, too. When you're... I hate to say nostalgia, cause I've already denied that earlier, but when you are feeling that you have regressed as a person, or as an artist, or anywhere else in your life. Look at what you used to be. When you feel worthless, look at what people told you was good. Maybe take a quick look around and determine what toxic situations are you in that might be contributing here. I wish I could cut this off nicely, like Aesop. Actually, I'm game. Let's play Aesop.

He who thinks he is of no worth is often right.