… nothing like the old days…
Lately, I’ve been reminiscing a ridiculous amount – like, more than usual and I’m a fairly nostalgic person. Of course, in typical Austin fashion though, I am a walking contradiction: on one hand, I can’t stop thinking about the past; on the other hand, I’m an optimist looking to the future… but I think it’s because I’ve recognized that you can’t have a future without a past; and, more to the point, you can’t have a better future without reflection. Where did we come from? The question humans never stop pondering. Without getting bogged down in mega-existentialism, this question does apply to our everyday lives too. And I guess that’s my point: regular reflection is healthy, though they say that living in the past is incredibly unhealthy (mainly because you might become stuck there, unable to move on).
Anyways, enough of the reflection on reflection.
February has been such a strange month – like a ‘transition month’ of sorts, I suppose. And that applies not only to getting back into the habit of actually doing my readings for my classes but also mental health, work, my relationship with Charlotte… everything is moving towards something.
A spike in my creative juices has also pushed me to do some more writing.
Specifically, Shawn called me up at the beginning of the month (or the end of January, it’s hard to remember exactly now) and asked me about a concept I dreamed up almost eight years ago now which I had simply called The Pit. Essentially, The Pit tells the story of a large hole in which the government decides to throw convicts and other societal problems; it fuses a post-apocalyptic aesthetic with science fiction and horror. Anyways, Shawn asked me if I was doing anything with it and, funnily enough, I had just pulled out the original concept and started looking it over again. After talking for a while, coming up with some loose ideas of what either of us would do with it we came up with a fun idea: to write the story together. Literally, a day later, I made up the Google Doc and here we are, almost on our tenth page. Slowly but surely, we’re going to make this a story to remember and the most exciting part is that we get to do it together.
About a week ago I also solo-wrote a short-short story entitled The Never Nursery which I will be publishing here pretty much right after I finish this post.
I’ve also been working on an untitled script for awhile now but I don’t want to say too much about that right at the moment. I’m quite a few dozen pages in but it still has a long way to go. Once again, as with most things I write, it is horror fiction… something draws me to the darkness, I guess. And yes, I watch a lot of horror movies so that’s probably one of my major influences. I like to get at the root of what scares myself and others and try to understand why those things scare us (in all earnestness though, I think deconstructing it is really just an attempt to make it easier to write about and scare myself less).
Besides all that, I’ve been trying to do some more things in the realm of music. I wrote a few choruses over a beat that I’ve been in love with for a couple years now. It’s all about re-living the ‘old days,’ just as I mentioned before.
And other that all of that, well, I’ve just been trying to survive up here in the North. I go through phases of confident young adult to incredibly insecure fetus… it’s pretty great (but not really). Ultimately, there’s this weird middle ground where things go really well for awhile because I find that balance between confidence mixed with respect for the fact that I still have much to learn in life. I tend to underestimate myself for the most part so it’s not like I think I can do everything but, very often, second-guess myself or my own knowledge of things even if I am right. It’s a frustrating reality. Nonetheless, I’m determined not to let it get me down academically and creatively. The struggle may be pretty consistent but it keeps things interesting.
In the end, I just want to be happy, still in love, keep the friends I’ve pretty much had for my whole life so far, and have as many different animals as possible but still live a financially comfortable life.
Not too much to ask, right? Only time will tell!
thatfroninja. 