There used to be a through-line to my blog posts. Probably not something anyone but me would notice or know, but I could follow each post from one to the next as a solid chain of thought that ended with whatever blog post was my last-written. A chain sometimes mixed up or interrupted by more urgent-feeling posts or that broke up stuff I was obsessing over in order to give myself more time to think it through or an opportunity to let it breathe. Now… For a while now, there hasn’t been. I don’t know exactly when it changed, maybe in March or February, that through-line is gone. Each post feels like a disjointed pile of thoughts scraped together to form some kind of internal coherence with no real connection to the other posts. At least not for me. There’s thematic connections, topic connections, and so on, but those are the sorts of notes and labels you apply after the fact. The thought at the center of each is disjointed and disconnected in a way I have labored to hide. Maybe that’s part of why I’m having such a difficult time writing lately…
The roleplaying wrestling group I was recording and editing videos for has completed its season. I’ve done my final bits of recording. I edited perhaps my last video for the group. I’ve been working on transferring as much knowledge as I can to my prospective replacements in preparation for when I will formally withdraw from the group. No bridges burned, nothing definite. I don’t think I want to return, but I don’t know I won’t. After all, I learned something about myself this year. I learned I’ve got an eye for camera work. I’ve got a love for video editing. I have a new creative love. One I’m having a difficult time convincing myself to leave behind. I know I need to. I know there are better things out there, things that won’t consume so much of me. Things that are better organized, better run, not as exhausting to exist around, that will appreciate me and my work as more than just another reflection for my subjects to see themselves in… I just… Someone told me a long time ago that there will always be a little space in your heart reserved for the person you really truly loved and that idea has proved a little more accurate than I expected even back then, as I tried to navigate my feelings following my breakup with the first person I loved.
I will always cherish the first story that made me THINK and feel something resonate deep within me. I will never lose my fondness for the first big writing project I ever did. My first D&D campaign will always take up space in my mind. Leaving my first job was more difficult than I ever expected, even as miserable as I was. Life is a line of firsts, from the earliest moments you remember to the final moments of YOU within yourself, and we’re lucky if we can keep them coming even as we grow older and more settled. It has been a long time since I had one feel this impactful. Years maybe. I don’t really know. The past decade, and the past six years especially, have been a droning hum of static. An image unchanging as I’ve held the course, plotted long ago to reach the only future I could imagine for myself, through everything that’s happened because there are no other options that don’t involve at least faking my own death to escape my student loans. I have no other recourse. I’ve spent years checking, rechecking, and confirming with everyone I could that there were no options I was missing. No other paths I could trudge without making some greater sacrifice than committing myself to this interminable stillness. This was the least awful path, as awful as it has been at times.
When I left my parent’s home for college, I swore I’d never choice to live in such stillness again. I would chose anything over stasis. A vow tested by the end of my first year of college and the vocal assumption by my parents that I wouldn’t be coming back to their home again. I could choose to correct them and be forced to return to the same stillness of self that they’d raised me to occupy. To revert and lose all the momentum I’d gained. Or I could not do that and deal with whatever happened. I did not correct them and figured out how to, weeks after the deadline and mere days before I was to be kicked out of my dorm, spend a summer on campus. I would rather be homeless. I would rather die. I would rather almost anything that return to the immobility they had forced on me. I reached a similar point in my first job after college, a point I reached because I could put up with being miserable for years and needed the job. And then, rather than take drastic action, I found a better path that required sacrifice (took me three years to make as much money as I was making when I left that first job) but that let me move forward. Then the pandemic. Then living alone. Then the dawning stasis caused by the realization that I did not have better options. That this course plotted years ago and clung to during the uncertain months of 2020 was the least bad. After all, it’s not like I haven’t been applying for other jobs. It’s not like I haven’t explored every single possibility I’ve found or tried to make. Yet here I am, five years after the moment I knew I needed to make a change or risk stagnation, stagnant and still because at least that’s better than every other option I’ve had the power to choose.
The past year has marked the stark contrast between the way I am living my life and the nature of my very being. I like to move. I like to be in motion. I want to be going somewhere more than I like to linger. And yet I’ve been here for years, trying to find an off-ramp to no avail. I had an escape in the form of Final Fantasy 14 and the community that gained me, the opportunities for something ewn it provided me. And yet. Turns out not a lot has actually changed and what has changed was far less enduring than I’d hoped. Everything takes effort and I’m no stranger to hard work, nor will I shy away from a burden I will benefit from carrying, but so much of it feels like just more of the same. A creative outlet smothered by the constant effort required to keep it open. A community torn by mismanagement. And now I’m turning away from a new beloved form of self-expression because I am already fighting to keep one community running. I cannot afford the energy required to try involving myself in another one suffering from mismanagement, especially when it feels incredibly clear that any such efforts would not go unpunished.
It is bitter medicine indeed to be turning away from an opportunity to do something I’ve only just learned I love because it would mean continuing to pour out more of myself than I can afford to spill. To need to accept my limitations and inability to affect the change I desire right as the first real taste of hope I’ve had in maybe half a decade shines around me. There is a chance, finally, after a decade and a half of slowly growing stagnation, that things might change for the better if I can just get a job I applied for. That I am more qualified than anyone to take. It has awoken a well of emotion I’d long thought dried up and somehow that just makes this weekend and the knowledge I’ll be leaving camera work, directing, and video editing behind for now even harder to stomach. I want so badly to leave the door open, to leave myself some hope of returning to this new love of mine, but I know better. I know my path. I know the best route forward. I just have to hope it eventually leads me back to this newfound love of cinematography. Maybe once I figure out if this new hope is rewarded or held in vain, I can direct some of it to future opportunities. Maybe. I have to survive whatever happens with this job first.