It’s been awhile, about 347 days but hey who’s counting. Over those last 11 months a lot has changed in my life. The Drew Show has gone over 1000 episodes, the team added its third member with Barbress Jess, I got scuba certified, Hell I even rekindled an old flame that feels more concrete than I’ve ever experienced before. The year of 2024 has been a fruitful one as we get ready to end it on what I hope to be a high note. But over the course of this year one thing has quietly and continuously been pulling at the end of my shirt. Something that has been neglected, what used to be a constant in my life was now left behind. Something that I find myself looking back at but never revisiting, at least until now.
It’s been my writing.
I have been writing a blog, albeit a really cringy sad personal blog, since I was 18 years old. From writing letters about being a poor example to my younger sister to sad boy poetry, I have been off and on writing for over a decade. In those 13 years of writing, I have always felt that writing was a way to wash off the buildup of negative emotions and rather than drowning in them, using them as a way to be creative. The only issue with this method is running out of those negative emotions. What happens to your inspiration when you no longer face those constant insecurities, those dark patches in your brain that you once used to spark your creativity have now had a light shined on them? How do you find a new approach to something you’ve been doing the same way for the last 13 years?
You take basically a year off.
In that time you experience a happiness you weren’t sure you would ever feel, or honestly, feel you deserved. You bask in it for as long as you can, hoping that the storm you’re so used to raining on you doesn’t start to reform. But the storm hasn’t been back, and that light has a warmth you could have only dreamed of. You get comfortable, and you soon move towards that warmth, leaving behind the wetlands of that storm to find your green pasture, your Vinland. And in that peace you’ve now found, you find yourself content with the world around you. You stay as the world around you moves, changes, and evolves.
While taking a break isn’t a bad thing, knowing when to start moving is crucial to making sure you don’t fall back into that storm. Whether we like it or not, we must continue to grow, to learn how to maintain our garden, rather than letting the vines and weeds overgrow or the overbearing sun dry everything up. An old colleague once told me “Too much rain leads to a flood, and too much sun makes a desert.” That phrase has always stuck with me. Now I’m finding myself tending to my own garden, my own mind’s farm and though I have just started tending to it, I feel as if I am starting to see sprouts. Soon in the coming months, maybe half a year I’ll get to see the fruits of my labors and efforts. Until then I have to keep watering, pruning, and hoeing (not that kind you pervs) to make sure that these crops continue to grow.
So though my mindset has changed and what once was my inspiration to write has now blossomed into something new. Something fresh, and with the changing of the season it feels like it is only fitting that I change as well.
“Being empty means anything can fit inside you. if you want to be reborn, empty’s the best way to be.”
― Makoto Yukimura
