The time from the summer of 2022 to the summer of 2023 was something so nugatory, so inconsequential that discussing the mere details of that era by lacerating it into pieces I find to be an act close to worthless, far from weighty.
Not that nothing happened... but nothing happened.
When I say nothing, chiefly, I am referring to the artistic pursuit itself, to the dream, to the creation of soul. Throughout that entire year I could create not only nothing tangible, but just nothing. Whenever and wherever my hand would reach for a blank page, be it physical or digital, the words would evade me; they would simply choose to avoid me. It turned into a narrative of that romantic ilk where a lover realises how all along they had actually been deceived into this tale of illimitable devotion, when in truth it had, from the very beginning, from its deep-seated root, been nothing more, or rather nothing deeper and further, than a mockery illusion, to arrive at a place to which one was neither coerced nor persuaded.
They... no, I.
I just plainly and stupidly accepted the unknown call, or maybe the known calling.
As if the humiliation that came during the process of creation was not enough, what followed was a mixture of shame and embarrassment, but this time for the ability, or rather the incapability, of creating, of writing, of doing magic on paper, all naked and untouched.
For all of that, however, I charge as indisputably guilty not my right hand, but the right side of my brain. Over and over, in the perimeter of notebooks and laptops, I would linger, looming above their contents, which in truth amounted to zero. Yet with all attempts ending up fruitless, I would succumb to another defeat, their consistent and ruthless accumulation forcing me not only to accept failure, but to embrace it as well.
It was destiny's turn then, and I call it so owing to my unshakeable belief in it, but should you place no trust in that, you are free to rename it according to your own choice and comfort. It left the impression that fate needed to demand of me that I start everything from scratch, to start all over, all again.
I started with vocabulary.
I had that one notebook in which I would jot down every word I had neither recognised nor comprehended from all the books I had read. The books on my reading list at that time, though in that regard this time is no different, were not limited to fiction: I could read whatever piece of work contained a sequence of thoughtful words, whether those works were non-fiction or total fantasy, whether they were prose elaborated to their very nuanced details or screenplays that required prudence in word count, whether they were articles thought-provoking in their nature or pieces of poetry known to be soul-soothing.
I used to read everything.
I must admit at this point that in recent years, especially, I have become more of a writer than a reader, in spite of all the ardency and urgency professionals attribute to holding onto both.
Apparently, I am ill-equipped for competing intensities. I am capable of holding onto one scale at most, which brings anything but equilibrium. Or, in simple words, I am just myopic.
If only I weren't like that.
I wish I weren't.
I wish I had some power over what I think to be my ingrained trait.
Stupid, how, in pursuit of a filmmaking career trajectory, which in my case was mostly initially restricted to a path of screenwriting choices and endeavours, I sacrificed, no, I ended up consigning my major to the flames, the very major which, ironically, was neither engineering nor STEM nor finance, but literature.
Did I abnegate, no, did I forgo my major in literature in exchange for the screenwriting path only to undergo a subsequent return back to the pull of home in the form of novels I was bound to start writing with the arrival of August/September of 2023? If so, how stupid.
Though, it is an act of an imbecile only in retrospect, whilst if you asked my 20-year-old self whether I was stupid, I bet she would plead her case to be one of bravery and risk-taking insightfulness.
Upon mature consideration, though, it is still an idiocracy.
So, I started with vocabulary.
Taking under my custody the notebook with thousands of handwritten words, some advanced, some just archaic, I would create sentences out of all the handpicked verbiage, and then, from the created sentences, I would construct paragraphs, and eventually, from the created paragraphs, I would end up building scenes.
Everything I would transcribe into the newly bought notebooks I would highlight in multiple colours, multiple fonts, as if not on physical paper but in a digital Google Doc I were using.
I would ensure I bought a notebook cover for each one of them, and once covered, to the front I would put a drawing piece with a motivational quote on it that my little sister had given me, whilst at the back I would write down one simple note:
“A Creative Writing Notebook #1”
Then I would add one more to the list,
“A Creative Writing Notebook #2”
And then I would add another piece,
“A Creative Writing Notebook #3”
And then more,
“A Creative Writing Notebook #4”
And more,
“A Creative Writing Notebook #5.”
To this day I have them all with me. When I say so, don't misunderstand me, please, and think I carry them with me inside my backpack along with my laptop, which perhaps, as of today, has managed to become the most precious item in my possession, taking into account how many ‘creations’ it has been storing inside for now several years.
I have them with me in the sense that I didn't dare to get rid of them, didn't feel like reducing them to their unidentifiable form of becoming cinders.
They are back in my hometown, inside one of the shelves along with the printed copies of my yet-to-be-finished novels.
Perhaps, one day I will burn them all to ashes.
It just happens to be the case that one day is not today.
As of January 2023, another act of starting over had taken its place: I went back to an educational establishment, to get my education anew, to get my academic path this time completed.
Needless to say, my peers were younger than me by at least three or four years. And what I was about to study was the English curriculum all anew, the very material I had long covered back in high school. This time, however, it was being taught to me in a pedagogical direction.
It didn't feel right, and by right perhaps the word I mean here is ‘triumphant.’
It didn't feel triumphant, didn't feel like a person holding a pile of winning cards.
To plunge just like that from the mode of attempting to write feature-length screenplays in English to be merely put in a beginner class and loaned a personal office to scrape something out of basic grammar and vocabulary one was forced to review did in fact feel insulting to the ego.
Maybe that was the time my ego was meant to encounter its death, though rather its full destruction.
But because it kept refusing to taste its total annihilation, I couldn't bring myself to the sense of closure for the path that had long been buried in the summer of 2022.
My thoughts would still linger on the artistic path that, though I might have put on halt, I had not yet ‘officially’ abandoned.
I would ceaselessly explore avenues to my way back... back to my art.
As one year passed in between that brought no whatsoever wins or resolutions, I would age one more year closer to death, thus turning 23 in May.
And that May, along with the summer that tailed it, brought something I did not expect, nor even contemplate the possibility of occurring.
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