most of my search history lately has been about freelance writing- 'best litmags to submit to' 'magazines submissions process' 'contemporary lit forums' 'short fiction mag' 'writing portfolio', so on and so forth. i think a little (a lot) of it is done begrudgingly, out of the need to monetize one of the few things i enjoy doing because i simply do not want to do anything else. ambition is a buzzword i stuff into all of my applications but at the heart of it, i only want to swim everyday and buy a nice, shiny coffee machine. i want very little outside of that.
maybe i want a good camera too. i've been struck by the urge to distill every little moment of my life on tape and asked a bunch of my photographer friends the other day for good camera recommendations- i closed every photography-related tab once i realized the sort of things i want to produce happen only with the pricetag of a couple hundred euros and a bunch of software that i don't have the storage for. as it is, my dad gifted me his old digital camera from a decade ago and while i cannot create a feature length (and quality) video with it, it picks up the clouds passing by my window very well.
i thought of writing on medium or substack, gain a more stable following rather than the ebb and flow of random internet traffic, and perhaps letting this small little site fade out into mediocrity, but i've been here since i was fourteen and i will be twenty one in a couple months. i started it because i was heartsick and sad, all the ugly emotions coalescing into loud guilt with nowhere to put it. my psychiatrist told me to find somewhere quiet, and drop all the baggage down in a place no one can hear it and i figured the quietest place i had was online. a week later, i made this site and wrote about things no one really had full context to. it was peaceful in a sense, and this place is where i learnt how to do a lot of things. i learnt how to drag anger out by the fist from my windpipe, i learnt metaphors are my best friends and what clunky writing sounds like. i learnt i don't like to write when i'm happy, but i don't like to write when i'm too sad either. there's a sweet spot that's just three steps from the left of total equilibrium and i've learnt to balance on one foot quite well.
it's also nice having something to look back on, in terms of pure technical style and a personal sense. reading my new years post from 2020 and seeing the sentence "2020 shall be about the small victories" made me wobble in my place a little bit. reading how earnestly i finally wanted to learn how to be honest with people i loved, knowing where i am now due to that learned honesty, threw me for a spin. i've recorded so much on here, but at the same time, absolutely nothing at all. just enough for me to remember the severity of certain periods in the last few years, but not enough to clue a stranger in on it.
regardless of the scarcity of them, i didn't realize how childish i've sounded in all of these entries until recently, but i figure it's alright to be childish here. my one place. there's also a smug sort of sweetness when i notice my words flow a lot better than it did six years ago, and i'm finding a personal writing style. i had a journalism course last semester during which i wrote a feature story on the dutch housing crisis, and the professor liked it so much he presented it to the class. unfortunately, i didn't attend class that day (for good reasons; i had seen one of my favorite artists live the day before and i reached home quite late) so i missed hearing what he said firsthand, but a person i didn't know very well came up to me in the next class and told me how he didn't even need to mention who wrote it at first, it was so extremely obvious it was my writing. i was confused, firstly, but then extremely warmed. it is a lovely thing to be told your writing is distinctive. i never asked her how she knew i wrote it, but i think about it a lot.
i hesitate to call myself a writer ever, because what have i ever written really? the title of 'writer' belongs to those in the upper echelons that can untangle shame from their writing. amidst all the things i have learnt how to do on here, i have not learnt how to do that. my friends know i have a blog but i have never given them the url. there are a few stories in my roster, a few poems even, i'd go so far as to include songs i had written years and years ago back when playing music was a big part of my life, but what have i actually written?
to become a freelance writer when you cannot accept the fact that you write, to host a writing workshop and put yourself in the position to teach others how to write when you cannot accept the fact that you write- few things make sense to me, but somehow this does. i need to have all of the credentials before i can safely admit, yes, i write. intangible proof i can offer when someone asks me what i like to do.
when i initially started writing this, i wanted to make a blasé half-hearted statement about the inevitable doom that comes with monetizing your passion but as so usually happens when i write, the original point wriggles out of my hand and hides in a deep, dark corner where it usually disappears soon after. regardless, i hope i make it someday. i hope, someday, i don't feel hot embarrassment adding writing to my list of things i care about.
