28.9.2024

I'm not an athlete, but I know what it's like to chase a goal.

The blank canvas is my field. I leave muddied, grass-stained words across the page. I boast about knowing the keyboard underneath my fingertips the way an athlete knows the dirt under their cleats. I say this because I clock into practice everyday, even if not everyday is good.

Goal-chasing is an ego-driven sport, because statistically not everyone can be a winner. I spend my time imagining victory as my tongue memorises the taste of defeat. I imagine hearing deafening cheers from bathroom stalls. Each day the goalpost moves a little further. I do whatever it takes to keep it in sight.

I root for the losers in fiction, because I know what it's like to be one. I find the romance in stubborn, gritted teeth and aching, bleeding hearts. I brag about consistency, because a loser finds pride where they can. When you have nothing but weakness, you become resourceful.

I think when I finally do win, I won't know what to do with it. My scraped knees don't feel like they belong on the podium, my calloused hands don't feel like they deserve to grasp at metal. I think victory feels empty when you're basking in the praise of people who never saw your suffering.

I think when I finally do win, there's only one thing I'll do.

I'll grab the goalpost with my own two hands and begin pushing.

24.9.2024

Every morning, I wake up and stare at my bedroom wall, where two things that couldn't be more different stare back at me. On my left is the most majestic portrait of Astarion from Baldur's Gate 3 that a few friends gifted me for my birthday last year. On my right is a poster from the fan screening of Tatsuki Fujimoto's Look Back. And two thoughts flit through my head at once.

One, that there is no sweeter relief than being loved to the point of understanding. Two, that you cannot separate the pursuit of quality from the far more difficult and largely thankless pursuit of quantity.

I have written almost 50K words in the two weeks since I stepped out of the theatre for Look Back. Maybe even more, if you count the words lost in my backspace button and Google Docs history. Not all of these words were good, most of them were mediocre. I have enough of a writer's ego to say that none of it was bad. But all of it was practice.

Creativity has taken on a different form for me lately. I used to sit and wait for the proverbial lightning bolt of inspiration to strike, prick up my ears for the swell of ethereal music as Apollo descended from the heavens to plant a big, fat kiss on my shining forehead. These days I feel more like Hephaestus, hammering away at my forge creating weapons that may never get used.

There is nothing glamorous about the process of creation. And so we make art that romanticises making art so that we can remind ourselves why we continue to torture ourselves. I wonder if that's what went through Fujimoto's mind when he wrote Look Back, or whether that interpretation only exists in my mind as a viewer. Either way, my brain must be some kinds of messed up to see the stacks of sketchbooks lining the hallway to Kyomoto's room and think "I should really get back into writing" instead of "mayday, mayday! abort, abort!"

There is something inherently self-sacrificing about making art, or at least that's what I believe. If you're not sacrificing your body to sleepless nights (because you're a fully functioning human being with boundaries, congratulations to you), then you're sacrificing your soul, your wit, your memories; all to breathe life into pages, make blood flow through the veins of sentences that people may not even read.

If you asked me why I keep coming back to writing, I don't think I could even tell you. Except, maybe, it is a pursuit to be understood. It is a human desire as old as time. It is the foundation of language. It is wanting to be loved enough that your friends would buy an embarrassingly large portrait of a fictional elf-vampire for you to hang on your bedroom wall.

And I suppose that is romantic, in a way.

You can read my no spoiler review of Look Back here.

31.10.2023

This was originally posted on Twitter:

"On 4 Nov, I'll reach my second anniversary of streaming on Twitch. On 10 Nov, I'll turn twenty-seven years old. Today, I sit in an uncomfortable office chair I don't own and contemplate my mortality until one thought grinds everything to a halt.

I think I want to give up on being great (at least, for now).

It doesn't mean I don't want to be good. I still want to grow and learn and do cool things, but I want to give up on the idea of being great. Because this year I thought I was getting really close. I felt the yellow brick road under the soles of my feet, spotted the emerald city in the distance, and all the while, I was absolutely fucking miserable.

I think it's the folly of youth, and doubly the folly of creative people, to want to achieve greatness that will outlast you. Even as you trade away everything but the two feet that keep you standing; even as you realise you have spent more time exhausted than you have spent feeling like a person this year. How ironic that nothing has robbed me of more life than the idea of outliving myself.

But I won't bore you with longwinded lessons about drinking water and sleeping more. (Chances are if you're reading this, you struggle more with the doing than the knowing.) Instead, I'll tell you what I want to do next.

I want to reground myself in excitement and passion. I want to be known as the person who is in love with more things than she can count. I want to be selfish. I want to write more. I want to stop denying myself leisure because it doesn't contribute to a greater purpose. And somewhere along those lines, I want to begin creating again.

Guess that's a pretty good birthday gift. Happy 27th, Nat."