User blog:ChromastoneandTabby/Why

Why did I start writing?

I was bored.

I felt trapped.

My life was less my own and more a constant flow of other people living through me.

I wanted to feel like I was in control.

So I wrote.

I shaped myself into the hero I always wanted to be, clumsy as my craftsmanship may have been.

It wasn't real, so things didn't actually get better.

But they felt better.

So I kept writing.

Eventually, I stopped.

Things were just getting worse and worse at an astounding rate and my passion for the fake world I had created crumbled under the pressure.

Eventually, I began writing again.

I desperately wanted direction in life, and returned to my old comfort zone of creating false worlds to immerse myself into.

I wasn't very good, but that didn't matter.

Nobody cared about what I wrote, but that didn't matter.

I cared about what I wrote.

That's what mattered.

Somehow, somewhere, a few people began caring about what I wrote. That was nice.

It wouldn't last, but it was nice all the same.

Somewhere along the way, I think I forgot my passion.

I want to remake my old ideas to do them justice.

But do I really?

I want to see my new ideas blossom and flourish even if they start out half-baked.

But do I really?

Why do I want to tell stories?

What am I really looking for here?

Is it admiration?

I used to think so.

It seems like everything I do nowadays is for admiration.

I try to put my passion in places it doesn't really exist.

I want to rewrite my old stuff so people can admire it.

I want to make cool new things so people can admire it.

I haven't created a true passion project since Rebooted.

I used it as a means to work through my depression and criticize myself from an outsider's point of view.

But then I just decided I wanted to do something for the sake of it being cool and accepted by other people.

Hence Star Spirit.

I created characters and ideas with a lot of potential, and I want to do them justice.

Justice for them or justice for the audience, I'm not sure, but justice all the same.

But I can't remember the last time I did myself any justice.

I created Tech 10 from a place of personal meaning.

Eventually it lost that meaning and I lost interest.

I put personal meaning back into my work with Rebooted.

But that ended with Star Spirit.

All of my other ideas since then have just been half-baked cool things that don't actually carry any personal weight for me.

Even my other projects have turned into dead weights.

When I started CaT Reviews I wanted to help people get in-depth feedback and make people laugh.

It was tough, but I kept going.

Nowadays I can do it without any issue but it just feels empty.

The CaT Gazette started because I had a genuine interest in giving people news and getting my voice out there.

Now it just feels repetitive and empty.

I know people enjoy reading it, but I don't think it's actually important to anyone by any means.

I've been making the mistake of thinking just making a cool thing for the sake of making a cool thing was good enough, but it clearly isn't.

I managed to push myself through making an entire series without any personal passion, but I think I used up all of my energy to do so in the process.

How do I figure out a story I'm really passionate about?

How will I know how to write it?

How will I know if I should write it?

I don't know.

I don't think anyone else could tell me.

I guess I'll just keep moving forward and see what happens next.

I think that's the only thing I really can do.

Maybe the only thing any of us can.

Merry Christmas.