Hello again
Let's see if I can keep this up
Hello. I’ve thought about resuscitating this substack more times than you know. But it never felt right, because I knew that deep down, I wouldn’t be able to commit to updating it regularly. That’s one of the many lessons I’ve learned over the past year: learning what it means when you tell yourself that you don’t want to do something, that you aren’t ready for it. Sometimes, it’s the truth and an act of kindness towards yourself in the present and yourself in the future. Other times, it’s an excuse for continued weakness.
Here’s a quick life update for those who care (and are somehow still reading?). I was unemployed for a little over a year. In that time, my creative practice came to a standstill. After yet another drawn-out job rejection, I finally decided to stop letting the brutal unpredictability of the job market dictate the structure and flow of my life. And, of course, the moment I made that internal shift, I got a job. Hilarious.
And now, I’m making up for lost time. I started playing piano again back in January (right after the fires… lol) after having dropped it for over 20 years. I’m re-learning Bach and trying my hand at some Satie pieces. I started and then stopped making tiny collages. I’ve been drawing on and off. My short story collection still isn’t done, but once I finish the final story, it will be. I’ve been a monk for two years, willingly avoiding anything to do with dating or romance or sex. Some would call me a volcel. I’ve gotten into kpop in a huge way—it was important to me last summer when I was going on these crazed, hour and a half long walks in the park by my house nearly every day. During one of those walks, I completely fucked up my ankle. My entire foot was black and purple and yellow, but I recovered enough to resume said walks in less than two weeks. I played a lot of videogames and wrote a lot of fanfiction. I’ve become obsessed with Japanese incense. Apparently, I like sports now, specifically the WNBA and baseball. I’m working on a gay romance novel and I’m really excited about it. I’ve started Korean language lessons and I’m really excited about that, too.
I’m working on other stuff, too, but I’m keeping mum on those projects because that’s enough excitement for now. I don’t want to come off sounding manic. Because I’m not manic—I’m entering a new phase of my life where I’m actually doing the things I want to do and making the things I’ve always wanted to make. And while I trust in myself to maintain this level of momentum and discipline, it all feels a little fragile. I’m learning new things about my relationship to myself, my depression, my moods, my work.
There. That’s enough, right?
I decided to revive my substack because I was hoping it would give me an extra kick in the ass to finish my final short story, which has been a grueling process since I first started writing it over 5 years ago. It’s been so hard for me to finish for a million reasons: it’s the most straightforwardly autobiographical piece I’ve ever written; it’s probably too conceptually ambitious; the most interesting parts are already complete, leaving the whole middle section which consists entirely of plot (my weakest point) for me to tackle; I’m forcing myself to talk about my visual art.
That last part is maybe the most difficult. My visual art is the language that comes closest to capturing my internal experience, which makes having to build verbal language around it intensely infuriating and sometimes humiliating. I don’t exactly know why I feel this way. I guess the comparison I could draw is that it makes me feel like the times I would get frustrated and cry when I was a kid and someone would ask me why I was crying. Why are you making me tell you this? Show you this? I guess because it’s important. I used to think my writing and visual art existed in separate worlds and could never touch. It’s why I’d felt for years that I had to choose between the two. Turns out that’s not true at all—that’s what I’m trying to touch on in this story.
Anyway, I thought I’d leave you with some drawings I’ve made. Hopefully next time, I’ll have more to show and more to say, but for now, this “first” post is mainly for accountability. Pardon the sloppiness.
