No, You Don’t Want AI To Write For You

You know what genuinely flummoxes me? Regular, ordinary, content-consuming human beings advocating for AI automation in writing.

I was watching a YouTube video just now, and the creator mentioned that people sometimes asked him why he didn’t use an AI to write his videos for him. And of course he had his own response as to why not, but it all went over my head because I was too flummoxed by the question to think of anything else.

Producers, publishers, people who don’t care about the art, I can see them advocating for AI because for them, it’s more efficient and less hassle. They have to pay one less person, they get their product made more quickly, they get to overlook people who question the quality of the writing or the originality of the ideas. In the short term, anyway. I don’t know why anyone thinks they can get away with this in the long term, but that’s a slightly different conversation.

But, Christ. “Why don’t you just get an AI to write your videos for you?” What do people think writing is? Why do people think anyone makes anything? Writing scripts for videos sure sounds like a lot of work, why don’t you just use an AI to do it for you and focus on the other parts of the video? Why? Because then it wouldn’t be worth making! It wouldn’t be your own ideas, your own opinions, it wouldn’t be anything of substance. Is anyone actually doing this? Is anyone soulless enough to be in it purely for efficiency and money? (Don’t answer that.) Why would anyone be interested in the opinion of an AI in place of a real human being? That’s not someone’s opinion, that’s a Reddit feed restructured into a video. And that’s a truly horrific prospect, let me tell you.

Of course, this is about AI within the context of YouTube content, but it’s an equally stupid idea across the board. I’ve always wondered why writers take such a backseat in movie and television show credits, and it’s starting to look like that’s because of how they’re valued in the creative process overall. I can guarantee you there are executives at the heads of some of the most successful story-telling companies right now throwing their weight around to get AI to replace writers for the obvious reasons, because they do not consider real human writers to be important in the creative process of their movies or shows. Which is so intensely absurd. Without writers, what the hell is a story? Special effects and actors parroting stolen dialogue?

AI might be able to create a facsimile of a story, but unless it achieves some level of actual sentience, it will never come up with any new ideas of its own. Why do we bother to enjoy stories? If you can’t answer that question, maybe you should look into automating that, too. We can have AI making movies and AI watching them, then AI reviewing them and AI making YouTube videos about the reviews. It’ll be a perfect world, and we can all get back to doing labour. Wouldn’t want to go automating that now, would we?

I don’t often make blog posts like this, because I feel like all of the above has already been said, and my take isn’t necessarily contributing anything new to the noise. But sometimes, something comes along which is so earth-shiftingly ignorant that I have to say something about it, just to know that I’m not going mad. Let’s take the story-tellers out of story-telling, let’s automate art! Why? So we can make more money!

Isn’t the pursuit of technology supposed to improve our lives?!

I’m Jealous Of Another Part Of My Brain

One of the other hobbies I have is creating YouTube videos out of videogame clips and various discussions based around nerd culture, and I’ve always done that for fun with very minimal success. In recent months, however, the channel has been gaining thousands of views and steadily climbing in subscribers, which has brought me no small amount of joy. I can do it! I can do the video thing. I can make people laugh.

I am jealous.

Of myself.

Which is so stupid and absurd, but ultimately nobody is just one person and two things can be true. On the one hand, something I’ve wanted since I was a teenager is finally coming to pass, and I legitimately could not be happier about it. On the other hand, I can’t help but recontextualise my writing efforts and compare it against the channel. While I may pour a lot of effort and time into one project, I pour equal measures of deep thought and vulnerability into the other on top of a similar amount of effort and time. Like yeah, I can make people laugh, but can I make people think? Can I make people read a life experience and relate it to their own and have a humdinger of a brain poking session?

I am an idiot because I see people read my stuff and I am as thankful for it as I have always been, and now I am comparing it to an entirely different medium with an entirely different tone and having a crisis because it doesn’t get as much attention.

I think the thing I struggle with, even still, is having attended university to find a bunch of likeminded deep thinking writey-folk to bounce ideas off and feel validated existing alongside, only to leave university and be thrust back into the isolated void that is writing for oneself in an uncaring universe. A writer’s journey is often a lonely one, as it’s just me and this sheet of virtual paper, hashing it out until I arbitrarily come to a stop. I’m my own editor, so I have no idea if my garbled thoughts make sense to the outside world or if I’m just amusing my own tangle of nerves in the meat soup inside my skull. And then when I do hit publish, having absolutely no idea how many people these words reach. There are analytics, sure, but what is a view? A cursory glance or a fully comprehended ten-minute sit-down with a coffee and an open mind?

Actually, I don’t really check the analytics because I’m sure I won’t like what I see. So that probably doesn’t help.

Whinging about views is cringe, I know! But the goal of this blog is to be as open and honest as possible about my journey through life, and in my continuing attempts to portray myself with accuracy I have to acknowledge the parts of me that you’re not supposed to have. Like being jealous of the other part of your brain that can make people laugh, and comparing yourself against more successful people who are doing what you want to be doing but better.

“Making things is like deciding to spend your life playing a rigged demented slot machine, except instead of quarters you’re gambling everything that’s ever made you feel something and like, your childhood trauma.” – Savannah Brown

For those of you that do read what I have to say, thank you so much. I hope you don’t feel overlooked by my self-obsessive neuroticism in this post. If you’re fellow writers then maybe you can simply relate.

My Own Kind Of Magic

To me, there’s nothing that feels quite as satisfying as writing, specifically fiction. I don’t personally believe in predestination, but more than anything else, writing feels like what I was made for. It’s why I get so frustrated at my inability to remain focused on one project long enough to write a novel. It’s the metric by which I measure my worth as a human being, although I probably shouldn’t.

It’s early days, far too early to pat myself on the back just yet, but with this Multifarious Mind project, I feel this innate sensation of reclaimed identity. It began when my friend asked me to go over a script they were writing with them. The simple act of offering a second perspective on their superb work was enough to reignite the creative fire within me, and so I created Excerpts From A Multifarious Mind with the knowledge of everything I’ve learned about myself over the last few years to help keep that fire alive.

I can’t quite explain what it feels like to write stories. When I have an idea that I need to get out, and I’m a thousand words deep with plenty left to tell, I feel like the universe clicks in a way which it rarely does. I’ve heard artists talk the same way about sketching or painting, and I’m sure musicians feel the same about songwriting. It’s the closest thing we’ve got to magic, I suppose.

Whenever I talk about this, people ask me if I’m going to take it further, write a novel, become world famous etc etc. Well last year, I tried to force my mind to remain focused on a novel. Chapter one went great. Chapter two, excellent. Chapter three was okay, but could use some work. Which I’d get back to, of course. Which I never did. (And I know not all novels are written sequentially, but that’s what made sense to me.)

Right now, I’m not writing for any reason other than for the love of it. I hope people read what I make, but even if my blog gets no hits and my videos get no views, I’ll be happy to keep going. Right now, writing just makes me feel alive. I hope I never lose that.

And if I stumble, and lose my grip on this part of my identity yet again, I can feel secure in knowing it’s within reach for when I want another try.

Third Time’s The Charm!

Hey you! Did you know that I’ve been trying to write stories my entire life? I’ve even created two separate blogs aimed at writing short stories in the past and immediately failed to keep up with them!

For the full story on this, as well as my new short story blog which is absolutely going to stick this time, you can check it out right here.

The aim is to write a new short story every single month. I’m not aiming to get myself noticed, or published, or become a worldwide superstar or anything of the sort. I’m writing for the love of it, and to get myself into the habit of doing so. I already have a 4,500 word long first draft of May’s short story in my Drive, which will go up after I’ve donned my editing hat and had a whittle. If short stories of mine are something which interests you, go give the page a follow!

From Here Onwards

I used to write one of these at every turn of the year, but it got a little exhausting talking about the past and the future at intervals where my life saw little change. Last year, I… did nothing, and this year I shall… hopefully do things! It began to feel like empty words. So, as we’re twenty days into January, please feel free to take this as a hint that this is not a scheduled yearly blog post, but one that I’m writing because I actually have things to say.

I’ve spent a lot of my twenties beating myself up about the state of my life. I grew up with grandiose ideas about becoming a world famous story teller who’d change the way people thought about the world! Fast forward to last year, when I’m sitting through a faculty meeting at work, listening to my boss tell us that we wouldn’t realistically be working here if part of us didn’t enjoy the work. No, I think, I’m working here because I’m trapped within my own limitations and only my friends here keep me sane. I still work there. I recently had an attendance review meeting because I took four unpaid days off in four months for being curled up in bed with the flu. It’s going real well.

So how come I’m not a world famous story teller? Well, I have a few theories about that (sans the world famous part). And this year… well, starting from the end of last year, because I wasn’t waiting for an arbitrary New Year’s Resolution before changing my life… this year I’m following up on my theories. For starters, I’m seeing someone about ADHD. I have nothing to share yet, so don’t assume I have it – there are people in my life who certainly don’t think I do – but personally, it’d go a long way to explaining why I have such difficulty not just with sticking to a single idea long enough to see it through, but also with plenty of every day problems in real life. Speaking of which, I’m also starting an online CBT course thing for anxiety! I won’t get into oversharing, but I think that a lot of my issues in life come from a generalised variety of anxiety, and so far it would seem that doctors agree.

So I’m not promising to write a novel this year, because I tried brute forcing that last year and I got four chapters into my first draft before having a crisis of confidence and binning the thing. But I am promising to work on myself. If ADHD and anxiety aren’t the issue, something else is, I know that much by now. I’ve barely dipped my toe into figuring this stuff out but I already feel more confident for the small scraps of validation that my investigations have brought me so far. Maybe I’m not just shit. Maybe I’m facing some real obstacles. Maybe I always have.

On a lighter note, another thing I want to do in 2023 is read more books! I’ve become super engrossed in comic books these last few years, so it’s not that I’ve not been reading exactly, but on the novel front, I’ve been mired seven books into the Wheel of Time series for some months now. Unfortunately, this fantasy epic becomes a notorious slog for the middle three books, and in my stubbornness to not give up I’ve ended up forsaking almost everything else. Last year, I read four books, two of them Wheel of Time novels. (The other two were Good Omens and Sylvanas, a World of Warcraft tie-in novel. Both are excellent.) This year, my aim is to read 15 books by the end of the year, which may not sound difficult to you, but… remember the possible-ADHD thing? I use Audible nowadays to listen to books on the way to work, as I have a tough time keeping my attention on the real physical deal. Unfortunately, Audible only gives out 12 book tokens over the course of a year, so 15 books may actually be an issue! Ah well. I’ll figure it out.

Thanks for reading. I hope your 2023 proves as fruitful as mine is planning to be. I’m considering changing the name of this blog from Perpetually Perturbed to The Tombstone Project, after the real-time memoirs project that every blog post here contributes to. What do you think? Let me know!

February 2021 – A Month of Fatigue

When I logged in to start writing today’s blog post I was informed that it was my seven year WordPress anniversary, and given that I created this blog at university as part of a writing project there, I did what any well put-together adult would do: I mentally crumbled and had an existential crisis about the passage of time. Because, I mean, seriously. 2014 was seven years ago?! That’s not allowed! That’s illegal! Stop that at once! I haven’t grown enough as a person since then for seven years to have passed! Aaaaaa!

But anyways, we’re here to talk about my February. My hilariously empty February. What happened to me in Februrary? I scream, for I do not know.

The optimism I had in January slowly slipped away as more and more news came out about how long the vaccination process will take, the restrictions that we’ll still need to adhere to post-vaccination, and the government’s subsequent ignoring of most health official advice. Don’t come at me about politics either, I don’t even know the details because they’re too depressing to keep up with. All I know is that I walked into a room with a TV on a week or so ago and heard Boris Johnson talking about school re-openings and “unavoidable deaths” in the same breath. That light at the end of the tunnel may be farther away than I initially had hoped.

I’m not completely down in the dumps, though. We’re closer to the end than we are to the start, and throughout this entire thing I’ve been relatively successful in staying positive by not thinking too far ahead. When I think of the months ahead I’m not thinking about continued isolation and arguments about what risks we should be taking, I’m thinking of videogame releases and upcoming shows, and how we’re finally starting to see sunny warm spells outside, which are not to be underestimated in how effective of a mood-booster they are to me right now. I’m continuing to only leave the house for work and necessities whether the government lifts lockdown or not, as I have been this entire time, with the knowledge that in another time, in another place, this will all be a distant dark memory. I hope that anybody who is reading this is able to find some similar comfort in that.

As far as what I’ve been up to… well, I have a stumble I need to address. In early February I got very excited about the prospect of applying my creative philosophies on video series and blog posts onto fiction writing, in an effort to get me writing more. In that vein, I launched a new blog named Have It In By Friday, the core idea behind it being that I’m to publish a new short story every fortnight. But after my first story, which I’m very pleased with and put together in about two days, I went on to miss the second deadline, and we’re now less than a week out from the third and I have little to show for it. The easy conclusion to jump to here is that forcing deadlines on myself isn’t a strategy that’s going to work, but if I’m honest, I’m not sure how to get myself writing otherwise, as I’ve produced very few short stories in the years since I finished uni. Waiting for motivation to come to me isn’t the right answer, because it’s unreliable and either abandons me for months or strikes at times when I can’t write, such as during work or when I need to sleep. It’s a very frustrating problem, but it’s not one I’m going to give up on trying to solve.

I sometimes wonder if I’m trying to juggle too many creative projects at once. Besides the two monthly blog posts I do, one at the end of the month here and one on the 10th at my sister blog, I also create a weekly gameplay video series that I’m 148 consecutive weeks into. Outside of time specific content, I typically make two more videos per week for my channel, either gameplay highlights or commentaries on books or shows I’ve been reading or watching. I love doing all of this, but fitting a fortnightly short story around that schedule has proven difficult, and as an aspiring author I feel like I’m betraying myself by refusing to make room for it. It’s something I’m still grappling with, but perhaps I’ll have the answer by the next monthly update.

Beyond my creative endeavours, I spent February taking a hard left from my obsession with Elder Scrolls Online on Xbox to an obsession with my new Ironman account on Runescape. I also enjoyed reading through the first omnibus volume of the Cirque du Freak manga, started to care about Nintendo consoles again thanks to some actual Nintendo news, and enjoyed Blizzard’s BlizzConline event more than I thought I would.

If it sounds like I’m scraping the bottom of the barrel for the “in other news” part of this blog post, that’d be because February was sparser than a parsnip basket in winter. See you on the other side of March!

My Current Creative Projects

Okay, so this is partially a post to consolidate all of my ongoing creative projects into one handy place, and partially me patting myself on the back. But I figure that while this stuff is all well ordered in my mind, it might be nice to put it all in one place for all to see. Who knows, you might just discover something new about me.

Youtube Videos

Click here to go there

I am on Youtube under the name of Kritigri, and I quite consistently upload three gaming-based videos a week. Would you believe me if I said I didn’t plan it this way? I have the one weekly video series but the other two weekly uploads just tended to fall in place by themselves. It was only when I noticed the pleasant symmetry of video thumbnails on my page that I decided to try and make it a constant in my life.

The Weekly Waypoint

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Previously named The Weekly Deathmatch, this is my weekly video series where I ramble about whatever I please, though it’s almost always related to gaming, or whatever fictional media I’ve consumed that week. These videos typically aim for the ten minute mark, and are made up of pre-recorded gameplay and post-gameplay commentary. Tomorrow we hit episode 120, meaning I’ve been at this for well over two years, with no intention of stopping anytime soon.

Edited Gameplay Compilations

Click here to go there

Basically, the videos with yellow text in their thumbnails. These make up two thirds of my weekly video content, and are compilations of bitesize clips taken from games I’ve been playing. This all began some years ago when I discovered the DVR function built into Windows 10 which allowed me to save the previous thirty seconds of gameplay at the push of a button. I started a separate (now repurposed) Youtube channel to dump these on, but soon began experimenting with editing these videos together, trimming off the seconds of silence and making them around 5-10 minutes in length. Given the extra effort and care, I moved these videos to my main channel.

Twitch VODs

Click here to go there

The aforementioned repurposed Youtube channel is now home to on-demand versions of my Twitch streams, as well as highlights taken from said streams to be consumed in a more bitesize format.

Twitch Streaming

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Okay, so this isn’t so much of a constant in my life as my Youtube videos are; the only schedule I have regarding streams is on a Monday, when I stream the live recording of my podcast with my friend Reece (more on that later). My spontaneous streams, though, which can occur anywhere between five times a week to once every five months, are of whatever games I feel like playing. Sometimes it’ll be a live service style game or an MMO like World of Warcraft, where I can hang out without the pressure of completing some arbitrary objective. When I do want to punish myself, however, I’ll start up a full playthrough of a game like LEGO Star Wars, which is a bad example given that it’s the only one I’ve ever finished.

Podcasting

This is a very new and recent occurrence. After many years of consuming podcasts while commuting or grinding out some achievement in a videogame, I’ve finally decided to start dipping my toe into the podcasting business myself, and so far, I’m having a wonderful time.

Pictures Without Pictures

Click here to go there on Spotify

Here’s the weekly livestreamed podcast I mentioned. The basic premise is that I don’t watch a lot of movies, but my friend Reece totally does! So every week we pick a movie, watch it through and convene on Monday evening to discuss our thoughts on it. Episodes are typically an hour to an hour and a half long and you can find it on proper podcasting apps like Spotify, and Apple Podcasts, and Google Podcasts! It’s well exciting. Out of all my projects, this is the one I’d be most thrilled for you to check out right now. Next week we’re discussing Jurassic Park…

Kritigri FM

Click here to go there on Spotify

Ah, okay, so, bit of a cheat, this one. I’m essentially using a podcast feed to upload audio versions of these very blog posts, once I get around to finishing up my monthly series. I also record audio versions of my gaming blog posts (featured below if you’re unaware), and the occasional podlet-exclusive candid review of a show, or a game that I’ve recently played, or, erm, the concept of achievements! It’s a bit of a grab bag, but don’t blame me, blame Anchor for not allowing multiple podcasts per account (though otherwise it’s a godsend of a service).

But I hear you asking… why bother with audio versions of these blog posts? Well, besides accessibility, I just think people are more likely to listen to a 3-6 minute audio version of a blog post than to read the 1000 words contained within. Plus, there’s bloopers, and they’re well fun. Also, it’s neat to practice my voice for future potential projects. And it’s weirdly satisfying to do!

Blogging

Ah. This is as close as we’ll get to a “writing” subheading for now, I’m afraid, but hey, it counts in my book. Hah, get it? Book? Totally an intentional pun that I didn’t just catch on the read-through.

Perpetually Perturbed

Click here to- wait, no, you’re already here

Well, you’re already here, aren’t you, so I don’t have a huge amount to teach you here. You’ll already know about my monthly blog post series, which is autobiographical in nature and tends to discuss mental health, the state of the world, and my miscellaneous musings. You’ll possibly know also that this is a part of The Tombstone Project, my lifelong memoirs (god I hate that term) which intend to preserve some semblance of my personality long after I’m dead, if anybody cares to read them. Self-absorbed? Potentially. Morbid? Absolutely! But it gives me some peace of mind.

I’ve also recently re-committed to reading actual frickin’ books, and will attempt to review them as I go. You can already read my latest review, the newest WoW novel by Madeleine Roux, here. I’m currently working my way through Star Wars: Thrawn, but despite an interesting first third of the book, I’m finding the second third to be a bit of a slog.

32 Bit Brain

Click here to go there

Did you know that I have a sister blog? It’s all about videogames, which, you may have noticed, are a bit of a running theme in my life. But if I love gaming so much, I may as well write about it, and while I don’t have any concrete weekly or monthly blog posts publishing over there, I have been experimenting with some new series, one documenting a journey to collect achievements, the other a retrospective of my oldest gaming memories. I may need to work on those titles, though.

I’ve also decided to start reviewing games that I’m finished playing, much in the same vein as I review books. You can find the first of these reviews right here.

What Else?

What, that’s not enough for you? Greedy…

I mean, there are smaller things which I don’t count as productive but I enjoy working towards as a larger task. Completing certain game series, and their achievements. Expanding my knowledge of history with podcasts. Educating myself on movies, which is what drove me to start Pictures Without Pictures in the first place. And there’s always actual, physical work which I attend five nights a week, if you want to be thorough about it. That’s certainly not productive, though. Reductive, maybe.

Thank you for taking the time to look at my creative projects, though. I’d be thrilled if you gave these a try, but if not, I’m chuffed you took time out of your day to give it a gander. Follow me on Twitter at @Kritigri for a glimpse at future projects when they arise.

Year to Year: A Journal Through Time #19 – Writing my Future (28/5/19)

Recent headlines

World: The UK’s European elections 2019 (Don’t blame me, I voted Green…)

Gaming: The next Call of Duty is just called Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (Woah, let’s not go breaking any wheels, guys)

I’m Playing: World of Warcraft (life is cyclical etc etc), Elder Scrolls Online: Elsweyr (cats are people too, you know), Mario Kart 8 (Crash Team Racing hype!)

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I’m sorry! I’m a day late on writing this one, and I’m also writing it a little late into said day. But I have an excuse – well, not an excuse, but a fact which might make this dreadful sin more forgivable. I’ve been writing! Not like, as in, writing blog posts or journal entries (obviously), but actual, fictional writing. Well, sort of. I’m not drafting the novel which will be my immediate breakout success and catapult me to an awards dinner with Stephen King. For now, I’m writing short stories and flash fiction. I am drinking from the water cooler at r/WritingPrompts. It tastes oddly metallic.

Writing is a muscle which needs to be stretched. Write every day, if you can, or so the writers tell me. And I’ve been hearing that advice since I graduated from university with my Creative Writing degree, and every time I’ve heard it I’ve sat and frowned a bit and done the mental equivalent of pulling my fingers backwards in punishment, or twisting my ears until they really hurt. I’ve been beating myself up! Because I grew up telling myself that my only talent was writing, and I’d given up the moment I realised that achieving my dreams wouldn’t be possible on base talent alone. I’d have to work for it! How unsightly! I’d just done three years of writing to deadlines and adjusting based on critical feedback. The world wanted me to do more of that?

Yes, Kristian. That’s how writing works.

So basing your self-worth around your only talent in the world isn’t something to be recommended, it turns out. This is because when you inevitably lose faith in your ability to do the one thing you’ve convinced yourself you can do, you no longer have value. Oops! And it doesn’t matter that you’ve graduated with upper second class honours, which is frankly fantastic. It doesn’t matter because the version of yourself which can sit at that awards dinner with Stephen King and all the rest is the version that got a First, made the Dean’s List, had already got a publishing deal lined up and had also cured cancer along the way, probably. And if I’m not that version of myself by the time I’ve graduated, when am I ever going to be?

Good lord. What a mess.

I linked to an article in an earlier Year to Year journal post which mentioned that when we think in a particular way for an extended period of time, it becomes easier for that method of thinking to be normal. They likened it to cutting a path through a forest, and returning through that way over and over. “I’m as good at writing as my peers” is, at first, a humbling thought. A healthy one. An important one. But when I retread that thought over and over it becomes tinged with fear. “I’m still not as good at writing as my peers.” “I’ll never be as good at writing as my peers.” “I’ll never be good at writing.” And as the thought morphs and I think it more often, it isn’t just something I think. It’s someone I’ve become. “I’ve lost faith in my ability to write. I’m a failure.”

Welcome to Kristian at 23. He has one thing he’s good at, and he doesn’t think he wants to do it anymore, because he’s not good enough at it.

So how do I get out of that thought pattern? Because it is, I think, a little worse than writer’s block. Well, the answer isn’t the easiest one, because the way I’ve arrived at my current state of being is through intense levels of discontent. Unhappiness which reaches deep enough for me to do some soul searching. What’s going in there? Every time I try to reach for some golden answer that helps it all make sense, I find nothing but this miasmic grey mire which is impossible to give shape to. But on the way there, I find indicators. Sources of unhappiness. Nothing I can cure all at once, but it’s time to start giving it a go. What’s this big, pulsing orb of negativity right here? Why, it says, “I’ve lost faith in my ability to write. I’m a failure.”

Getting back into writing wasn’t going to solve a lot of my discontentment. It hasn’t. In fact, it might cause more if I fall off the writing wagon, because that makes the discontented thought that much stronger. “I’ve lost my ability to write. I’m a failure.” How bad does that sound? God! So giving the Writing Prompts subreddit a go was terrifying. Not least because my original motivation to become a writer hinged on me having an outstanding gift that made me unique, in a sense, and that subreddit is full of writers who are better than me, all of which get quite a lot of attention for their work. Now, I’m quite accustomed to putting a lot of effort into creating content without much of an audience – look at my Youtube channel – but I’m okay with that, because the act of creating the content is a hobby. Writing is my calling, though. If I fail to grab people with it, that’s a bit different.

So there it is, I can’t. I can’t because, because, because. And that’s why I don’t. And I can’t because I don’t. So how do you break that cycle? You just do.

So I did.

I wrote a 700 word short story based on a writing prompt and I posted it in the thread along with the countless other stories. And I got one upvote, and nothing else.

And my world didn’t end.

So I did it again.

Writing is a muscle which needs to be stretched. It’s not a secret weapon to use when you feel like cashing in on your destiny. It’s not the solution to your myriad of other problems. It’s a talent, but without practice, it isn’t a discipline. So I’m practising. And if someone mocks my writing or tells me it’s awful, my world still might end, because that’s not an area I have thick skin for. But withdrawing from my calling because my world might end is redundancy of the highest order, as the possibility of my world ending is less destructive than refusing to start living in it.

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Further reading:

E.K Johnston: Your Brain is a Forest (This again – haven’t re-read it but this is where the forest analogy came from)

The Weekly Deathmatch #57 – Overwatch – On Writing (This post, but articulated differently)

Writing Prompt 001 – Deliverance (Oh god I’m posting them here too)

Writing Prompt 002 – Lonely Road (Oh man oh jeez pardon my rust)

Year to Year: A Journal Through Time #1 – My Secret Writing Project (21/1/19)

Greetings, internet! Welcome to a brand new series of blog posts that I’ve been working on for exactly one year to the day. My current plan is for these to release weekly, each post scheduled to publish exactly one year from the present date of writing. Return to this blog every Tuesday for fresh news as to what I was up to a year ago today, typically covering details about my personal life (though hopefully not too personal), what games I’ve been playing and what other media I’ve been consuming, as well as some fun contextual information about the world back in 2019.

Basically, these posts will cover whatever is on my mind at the time, a little like my old weekly blog post series, but with the added quirk of time travel. Strictly chronological time travel, but time travel all the same.

So basically I’m ripping off Youtuber Bing for this idea, although he admittedly has the more ambitious goal of making the videos daily (alternating between Past Bing and Future Bing). I don’t really watch him, but he is a friend of a Youtuber I do watch called Thomas ‘TomSka’ Ridgewell, and they recently released a video discussing a point of enmity between them which was recently finally buried, prompting me to try his Past Bing Future Bing series. I’ve decided to adopt a similar idea in blog post form, as writing a blog is not as time consuming (I do have two jobs) and will get me back into the habit of writing regularly.

I do want to keep my work on this series completely secret until their publication, so if this took you by surprise then I was successful at keeping my trap shut for an entire year. Woo, go me! I’m sure I confided in a few people or made references to a ‘secret project’ throughout 2019 because I just can’t help myself, but I currently have no intention of doing so. I’m currently a little concerned that I can’t do one creative thing without shouting from the rooftops about it, like I’m trying to prove to the world that I’m not a waste of space, or that I’m trying to prove to past Kristian that I’ve not completely abandoned his dreams of becoming an author. By working on this project for an entire year in secret, I’ll have successfully proven to myself that I’m capable of having self-worth without seeking validation from others.

That being said, I am currently enjoying turning almost every hobby I have into some creative outlet. For gaming I have my Weekly Deathmatch Youtube series, my current go-to for discussing my general thoughts and opinions on games, movies, etc. I’m also in the middle of re-watching Doctor Who, but I’m reviewing each episode in blog post format and posting them series-by-series on this very site, though I’ve taken a small hiatus to watch Titans and season two of Marvel’s The Punisher. Even music isn’t safe, as I’ve been compiling my favourite soundtracks into a playlist on Spotify named Superb Soundtracks. Plus, at the start of 2019 I created a giant spreadsheet wherein I’ll list every single piece of entertainment media I’ve consumed this year, alongside a rating out of 5 and a brief comment. The general idea is that I’ll be making more end of the year blog posts regarding my top 10s, but only you, dear reader, know whether this idea came to fruition or not.

I’ll try not to make these blog posts too self-referential, and while predictions are fun, I don’t want to depress future Kristian when he reads these back and discovers how little his life has changed. (It’s happened before.) For now, all I’ll say to him is to take it easy on himself, and that if nothing grand has changed in these last twelve months, then that’s not entirely bad considering the current state of past Kristian’s life isn’t all too terrible.

2019 – The Year, the Decade, and the Future

Every year – bar last – I do a little retrospective write-up on how the year’s gone, and my plans for the future. The reason I didn’t do one for 2018 was because it was, quite frankly, awful. Didn’t feel like recapping that one. But I mention it here because it informed a lot of my 2019; I spent most of this year with the mindset that I was laying low, emotionally speaking, not trying to make too many leaps and bounds as far as life goes. I just wanted to… breathe. To recuperate. But as a result. this year has been hugely uneventful. The largest change was probably when I left one of my two retail jobs, in favour of taking overtime to make up hours at Job Number Two. How eventful.

The thing is, when living a quiet and dull life like I’ve been doing, happiness lies in simpler things. Hanging out with friends, in reality or online. Getting immersed in a really good RPG. Falling in love with an animated series from 2004. To a certain subset of people this might sound boring or dreadful. but I’ve never been one for loud environments or friend groups with shifting relationships and regular arguments. Outside of actual meetups with friends, I’m happiest behind my PC, talking over Discord, maybe playing a few rounds of a multiplayer game together. And I did a decent amount of that in 2019.

But if you’re reading all of that and thinking, wouldn’t you be in a rut after a year of this? My answer to you is, oh, absolutely, little bit bored to death to be honest. So next year I want to break free of the mould a bit. Give myself license to continue developing as a person, if that makes sense. For a year I decided that attempts to do so were too painful, but if the last month has taught me anything it’s that life can bite you at any time, in any number of ways, and it won’t let up just because you’ve had enough. It doesn’t care that you’re trying to hibernate from life. Life keeps ticking by all the same, and you’ll always be a part of it. You’ve just kinda gotta… deal with it as it comes.

(that being said I still have huge motivation issues so don’t expect me to up and change as a human being in the next five minutes)

But it hasn’t just been a year, has it? It’s been a decade. Blimey. And don’t argue that the decade starts with 2021, because Gregor the Calendar Man disagrees with you and that’s the one you plan all your birthdays with. Besides, it’s just nicer, isn’t it? 2020. Nice even start. The only issue I can see with next year is all the hurr hurr 2020 vision jokes. Make them stop…

So, 2010. At the start of this decade I was checks 14 years old! You do a lot of growing and changing between the ages of 14 and 24, and from where I’m standing it seems that I’ve changed from a loud and brash teenager with far too much energy and an attention seeking complex, to a… well, that’s the thing. The energetic and abrasive me still comes out when I’m amongst friends, I think, but for the most part I’m fairly quiet and reserved nowadays. I have colleagues I haven’t spoken to in three years, for fuck’s sake.

Anyways, start-of-the-decade-Kristian was often abrasive but also prone to bouts of melancholy, which I’d often beat myself up about, having convinced myself I was being overly dramatic. I was preparing for GCSEs, and had vague plans of taking the educational route through A-Levels and then University and then somehow becoming an author. Two out of three’s not bad, eh? I got middling GCSE grades (mostly Cs and two Bs) and took three subjects as A-Levels – English Lit, ICT and History. For History I had to bus to another school which had enough students giving a crap about the subject to actually warrant teaching it, and there I met a new group of friends who I spent a great two years with. I also had a tough second half of 2012, starting with the death of Nathan Wills, an internet personality who I’d sometimes spoken to, which I took quite hard. Events cascaded from there, with each of my closest friends going through various hardships, until the stress of me worrying about them led to me breaking down and crying in front of my parents, which was personally an extreme threshold of emotional stress to have crossed.

Times continued to move, though, and as friends we supported each other and moved forwards. I finished my A-Levels with decent grades, and scraped together enough UCAS points to be accepted into the Creative Writing course I’d applied for at the university of my choice. I spent three years there and made some more amazing friends. Some of the best days of my life will be counted amongst the various writer’s retreats we embarked on in Boscastle over the years. I have never felt so driven as an individual, or felt like I had as much of a purpose as when I was studying there. I learned a lot about writing, about the world and myself. But it was also a course that left me with a lot of free time, and this was the era of my life when I really dived deep into online games like World of Warcraft, and made some of my best online memories, too. But despite Blizzard’s best attempts to distract me, I still graduated from uni with upper second class honors (basically a B, which is good) in Creative Writing. Woohoo! Where do we go from here?

Well…

Stagnation?

Viewing my life from a purely critical or objective standpoint at this time, it becomes slightly embarrassing. I promptly did nothing with my writing degree and picked up not just one, but two retail jobs. I’ve met some great people and don’t necessarily regret my time working there, but they absolutely should not have become my final destinations as they have been so far, and the fact that I’m living such a safe and low-key life while working retail is probably the reason behind my underlying discontent. I also suspect some from mental health is at play to some degree, but I won’t self-diagnose on something that important.

I could sit here and speculate on reasons behind my lack of motivation or success in finding writing-relevant jobs in my area, but I’d only make myself miserable and possibly others frustrated. All I’ll say for now is that in the next decade, I hope to find myself back on a meaningful path in life. And in my defence, as I stated earlier, I’ve found happiness in the more day-to-day aspects of my life, like gaming with friends and creating content as a hobby. And as I’ve been saying for years, the very point of life is to be happy within it. And I am. To an extent.

Next decade will be about pushing that extent to a place that I’m less… ashamed of.

Happy New Year, everybody.