This is a blog. It is on the internet.
Can you write about writing without sounding like an asshole? Probably not. But I’m going to try.
Throughout my life, one thing has been painfully clear to me. I write to get through what’s happening. It’s simultaneously a process of digestion and expression, which often leads to cases where a cooler head would have prevailed. But these two pieces of a person are so critical that the cost has often been worth it. Not always, but often. So, writing I would do. As much as I could; lists, plans, journals, gratitudes, platitudes, the works. My life is a paper trail of decisions, revisions, and excisions; all leading from where I started to where I am.
I would be a fool to not want to prosper from that. I’ve got that same fear of death so many of us do, damn me, and I wish to persist past my own perishing. If I’m going to be writing everything down all the time anyway, why not make a living off of it? All of these thoughts (and many more!) invaded the mind and poisoned it to such a state of paralysis that required years to push through any real portion of it. Work which actively persists! That’s why we’re here.
And where is here? A blog post on the internet (a most unfortunate place). A blog that I have paid for, with money I earned from writing. All I could buy afterwards was a stick of gum, but they say it’s bad to keep moving the goal posts. There’s a version of me, some dumb kid who started putting work out in 2014 at the age of 20, that would flip his shit if he knew that.
But there are some things that same part wouldn’t be too happy about. Namely that big gap from 2020 to 2024 where nothing happened. It’d be really difficult to explain to someone overly familiar with the lore of Sonic the Hedgehog how the economic, social, and personal costs of a completely unexpected global shift that impacted literally everybody would change his general outlook and direction. The paper trail dries up over this period, replaced by a string of attempts to find some type of meaning in a world that seemed so drastically different than the one I barely understood to begin with.
I feel unstuck in time. Disconnected from so much of who I was when I thought I’d be somebody and who I am now. But I’m reconnecting in little ways. Music, old comforts, and writing again.
In the past year and change, I’ve re-entered the world of poetry, established myself as a person who “can write about video games",” and had my first prose publications. I’ve been featured in two anthologies. I had a cover story published in a magazine. A good poet with a bad LinkedIn account left a comment on a piece of mine that said “Great poem!” These accolades have at least convinced me, in the smallest way possible, that I can keep doing this even if it doesn’t pay my bills. Which, realistically, I knew it wouldn’t do in the first place. But hey—never say never.
The feeling of “waking up” is a tempting one to chase. To believe that this time, at last, I’m onto what’s going to make me happy. I think we have it many times throughout life, in ways small and large, and it is how we reflect in those moments that impacts who we become. The process is a long one. Part of mine is this blog, a place to hang my sign and do what I want to do when I want to do it. To hammer around on my keyboard and see what we get.
To conclude:
Howdy! I’m David, welcome to Coled One.
It’s a blog.
Watch out now, here I come.
“The years run too short and the days too fast.”