Max Talks #1: An Explanation

[taps mic] is this thing working?

quick note: this might will be a long post. it's going to be a little more rambly and messy than i'd normally be on here, maybe a little more personal than i've ever been. and i hope you're fine with that! if not, too late, i guess. stick around for some of that messy shit. 

i.

hey! it's been a while. 

i've wanted to write this thing for weeks, not going to lie. but every time i'd try, it would feel a little awkward. you know how you want to reconnect with someone who's drifted away because of distance or a fight gone wrong? it feels a little like that: awkward, disjointed. messy, maybe. but the best thing to do is just get the words out there and hope for the best. 

the last time i was genuinely active on here––making an effort to post every month and all––was around august 2017. i'd just ended the blogsary celebration, and as usual, i'd spend the following month just resting and cooling down. i'd expected myself to get back on track around october; then would come november, then a small christmas surprise, then a birthday thing in january. 

but i ended up ghosting-ish. i hit a big dry season in 2018 and tried to come back for august 2018, but ended up dropping halfway through. radio-silence for months until december 2018, and then silence yet again until august of this year. then silence once more. 

it's been weird. i know. and to anyone who's been waiting on me, i'm sorry for disappearing. things got rough around 2017 and sort of went downhill from there. but i'm doing my best to pick myself up after all of that. 


ii.

what's happened since august 2017? 

1. my laptop broke. 

it sounds dumb, i know. but after or around the time i returned to university for my third year, my laptop gave up on itself. it wouldn't really start, and if it did, would take around half an hour to fully boot. my dad was able to provide a temporary solution within a couple of weeks, but from that point onwards i felt like i'd lost an arm. 

being a dumbass who didn't use time machine back then, there was also a big chance that all my files would be erased. and it wasn't just my writing files that were in danger: my photos (from 2015) were in danger, PSDs and PNGs of graphics i'd created over the years were in danger, discontinued writing projects were in danger, so on. 

i think the worry that i'd lose those sent me into a mini-spiral of sorts. thankfully, the files were recovered in an external drive. my laptop was also fixed for a short time, but it would fall back into being broken from time to time, and that didn't really help. i knew i had to get back on here at some point, but after weeks of missing out, i ended up falling out of it completely. 

[is your laptop okay now?] i have a new one right now! it's working way better than my old one, and i have most, if not all the programs i need. it's really just a matter of starting all over again, which i've had trouble with doing. 

2. i finished my thesis and graduated!

that's me with my bound thesis! 

(had to censor names and information, sorry unu;;)

after defending my thesis on the first week of may, i graduated a few weeks after with a degree in english literature. my academics was another reason as to why i couldn't fully come back––there was so much going on with my different classes; papers to do, chapters to revise, readings to consume, things like that. it didn't really help either that i was juggling a big org position at the same time. 

i was able to balance it all during my first two years, but...something about the workload shifted around junior year. a friend of mine once said that "you only start feeling that you're a college student in your third year", and i experienced the truth of that for myself in 2017 and 2018. 

3. shit got tough. 

i couldn't find the time to focus entirely on my writing, as painful as that was. i brought a plotting notebook with me practically every day, and even that didn't motivate me to scribble anything down whenever the rare idea would come up. i had a private writing twitter where i used to thread endlessly, but even that came to a screeching halt. 

i think it was around junior year that i lost the motivation to read and write for a while. it wasn't the easiest thing to accept, to be honest; for literal months i thought that i stopped because of academics, because of my org work, because of other things that were [seemingly] more important, more valuable. i thought no one would notice either, but my parents did and would ask from time to time what happened. 

the easiest thing to do would be to just do something––to throw together something on photoshop, to write about a rare idea i had threaded on twitter. but it was hard to do. it was hard to pick myself up and just do it the way i used to years back. stuff felt heavy. and around half the time, i felt paralyzed. the thought of just writing and posting, of trying to get back on schedule while everything was already stacked to the brim was really, really scary. overwhelming. like there was too much information in my brain. and when there's too much to handle, often the most proper course of action would be to retreat. 

so i drifted a little further from the thought of coming back. 

and it sucked. the worries didn't disappear; i'd just shove them to the back of my mind. the thought of losing interest in a project i've worked on for so damn long is terrifying. i thought for the longest time that this was finally it: that my attention was starting to wane, that i was going to end up losing that i've been working on since 2015 if we talk original fiction, or 2011 if we're including the time when this project was purely fanfiction. 

so with all this fear, i ended up trying to force myself to come up with something new. but forcing myself didn't help––it just pushed me further into this overwhelmed state, this tired state, this state of just...staying in one place. remaining stagnant. 

and for the longest time, i was really sad about it. i wanted to be the same productive writer i was back in high school and early college. but i couldn't pull up the energy, the motivation. 

so i was stuck for months; years, even. i didn't like it. disliked myself a lot for it, was jealous of other people who could just come up with ideas at the snap of a finger. 

at one point i likened it to being in a race with other people and being unable to catch up because my car was broken. and instead of tending to my own car and figuring out what was wrong, i got mad at it. kicked the door and stuff. made dents, damaged the windows. 

come graduation, i thought that since i was finally free from my academics and my org work, i was free to finally get back to what i loved doing. i thought i could make it back easily and pretend as if the slump hadn't even happened. 

unfortunately, things don't really work out that way. 

iii.

what now? 

if my own brain were a mega asshole, this would be the point that i'd announce the end of the blog and the end of everything. thankfully, this isn't the case. 

it's still hard for me to get myself writing and reading again. i get bursts of energy, bursts of inspiration and motivation from time to time and use those bursts to my advantage. but they're rare and i can't control when they come or when they leave. it doesn't help that i've got a job now, too; i think switching to google documents in the middle of processing applicants or updating records would be a dickish thing to do, haha. 

but i think the best thing i can do is just keep trying. maybe stop being so stagnant and force myself to do something even when it feels like my hands are too heavy to lift and use. 

i've been working on coalesce as its own original project since 2015; writing since i was in grade one or three. it would be a waste to see all my prior efforts go to waste. what more when i know deep inside that there's still so much left to tell––and that, hey, a lot has changed since i dropped off the blog. a couple of new ideas and changes and improvements have come about, and i really, really want to share them on here. 

i've got some plans for the blog, too. there's something i've been working on since july, and it's not ready yet. but i hope to showcase it around december or january 2020. 

i can't promise posts 3-5 times a week starting now, but i can promise to do better. build up a routine again and put my best self out there no matter how shit i think it is. 

i want to continue doing this. i really do. 

iv.

i think the state of coalesce is something i've gotta discuss in a separate post. don't worry, though––i'm not giving up on it! 

to be completely honest, a lot has changed. i think my december 2018 posts hinted at a couple of familiar faces and some new ones entirely, and i really want to share them with you guys. there's also been other changes after those characters, so...i pretty much need to talk about them soon. 

i've also been thinking of bringing back book reviews and other kinds of posts? we'll see! 

anyway, i think this post has been going on for long enough. i'll end things here. thanks for sticking around. ♡