On 20 June 2023 I decided to write in a way that I could accept semi-officially. I learned a lot during this process, which took exactly one year.
First of all, there is the feeling that "one day, all this time will have passed and I will not even notice how it has passed", and that is what I am experiencing.
Although my feelings towards writing have sometimes gone beyond curiosity since I was a child, it could never be said that it was fully on my agenda. My diary entries were always for days that I could count as special to my adolescent mind, and the stories I created by copying were always in bits and pieces. I should also mention that sharing an idea, a story, was always frightening and gave me the feeling that it would be taken away from me, and I experienced a hesitation because of this.
On this day last year, after reading a manga, I had a relapse for some reason. I'm not sure if it was the effect of the artwork, because I've always found such stories to be fake and exaggerated (probably because it's never happened to me before, or if it has, it hasn't had such an effect). "Was it really because of a work of art that you decided to take your first full step into something that could affect the rest of your life?" was a question I used to ask inwardly of anyone with such a story, and indeed a form of mockery I found appropriate. "I read a book and my life changed" is still funny to me, to be honest. Of course, it is up to you to decide how inappropriate this behaviour is.
As I said, for whatever reason, after reading the manga, I felt a sense of excitement. I felt the need to express my feelings. I think this is one of the most basic human instincts. We have a need to express something. That's why we become a kind of storyteller, whether it's truth (to convey) or fiction (to create).
I guess the idea of collecting all my thoughts in one place was tempting because of my blogs, which I had created many times in the past and never looked back. But this time the desire to take it seriously must have come to the fore as I chose a platform for it. Immediately afterwards, because of the platform's global reach, I thought it would be appropriate to translate the same article as closely as possible into English.
As you can see, even though I wrote this article just to express my feelings and thoughts (for myself), I did not forget that the moment I put this article on an online platform, it could also meet others. That is why I wanted to share my thoughts, feelings, pieces of my life, literary forms with someone. I have always written primarily for myself, without any expectations; I have not neglected to take into account that there may or may not be possible interactions. From the beginning I have avoided any possible disappointment in this respect.
At the beginning of that year, I wrote every day. I didn't have an audience in mind and I went on without worrying about it. One day I could reach many people, but what I wanted to write at that moment was important. I continued with enthusiasm and in fact my first thought was not even to do it in a disciplined way. I thought, "I'll probably write every two days or once a week, maybe even whenever I feel like it". It didn't work out that way.
As a habit I inherited from my father, I am an archivist in such matters, so I took copious notes and recorded everything in as much detail as possible.
Between 20.06.23 - 16.08.23 I wrote every day, for a total of 59 articles,
Between 18.06.23 - 12.03.24 I wrote one article every two days, for a total of 79 articles,
Between 15.03.24 - 20.05.24, one article every three days for a total of 22 articles,
From 27.05.24 until today, I wrote one article every seven days, for a total of 5 articles.
I never gave up, except for the 3 articles I "missed" during the week after Christmas when I was ill. There have been times when I have been on the verge of giving up and wanting to break my chain, I have pushed myself quite hard and then achieved a series that pleased me afterwards. I continue to do this now, with the latest date interval that I have set.
In addition to the online platform I have chosen to share my writings for the past year, I have always saved my writings offline and shared them on a few other sites, the most important being this website.
Having twice encountered problems that prevented me from writing, I decided to end my posts there because I was discouraged. But that was certainly not the sad part. I wasn't earning any tangible income from it and I was already sharing my articles on my own website, I always had a space and it was all mine. What upset me was the end of the interaction with others.
At first, I concentrated less on writing in my own language than in English and followed the foreigners. I read different kinds of writing, tried to decipher the structure of the site, and tried to understand what was right and what was wrong. This helped me to realise that the number of my readers was actually less than the number of my followers. This confirmed my initial idea that the most important thing was to write for myself. Because there were always people who wanted to read. Even if dozens of people were following me, it was more important for one or two people to read and share their comments than anyone else.
Eventually, after a long time, I found a way to speed up local interaction. I wanted to get involved in a conversation with a person who had been following each other for a while and who was not a foreigner, because it was difficult to find people from my own country on the platform and I thought we could talk about some issues as travellers on the same path. After a quick decision, the seeds of a community were planted. We wanted to bring together people who thought like us, who were scattered around, and keep them connected.
Soon a community was formed, we met under the roof of a publication, online friendships were formed, we guided each other, we got to know each other, we discussed, and suddenly we became a community with a lot of readers and writers. However, there were many people like us, or many people who would prefer to be included in this platform were readily available. In any case, we set out to be as up to date as possible, and we succeeded.
When I started my writing adventure, I never thought I would attempt such a task, I thought of the blogs I had started years ago and left unfinished. I am in a period where I do not share the same fate and I am happy. At least I can say that I am mostly satisfied.
When I was suspended from the platform twice, I said I did not want to go back. This naturally put a distance between me and everyone I read, commented on and responded to in the same way. It was not a complete severing of ties; our online community was enough to keep us together. But such a blow was enough to completely undermine the element of interaction, another aspect I had not initially anticipated.
So, yes, I overcame my old indiscipline, but I paid for it without any remedy, losing social and moral gains that I did not expect at the beginning.
Photo by Photo Boards on Unsplash
On the one hand, it is a thing that can make the structure you are used to collapse in an instant. For me, going to the same platform every day to write and read was a habit, a daily activity. It was an explosion that undermined everything I had built up over time.
If we go back to the essence, all this bad-looking course is actually never an obstacle to writing. Sometimes we experience such bad ups and downs. They may even seem ridiculous or meaningless from the outside, but it doesn't matter. Our job is to bounce back somehow and maybe over time. Maybe it will take the same positive form again, who knows. But the important thing is to protect what we have, to add to it if possible, and to keep what makes us who we are.
I am happy to be part of the community for this period. This kind of structure was a promise I made to myself (unconsciously) at the end of last year. I wanted to join such a group, but I didn't expect to be its co-founder. I needed to overcome my lack of social skills, or perhaps my cowardice and laziness, and I thought it would be more productive to do so in the area I most enjoy working on. Fortunately, a message I sent that day caused all this.
Another wish of mine was to become a member of a book club. Again, it was really nice to be able to achieve this with this group. So the two things I had always dreamed of began. In that one year a lot of things developed, changed, collapsed, but eventually took this shape.
I am not generally unhappy, but I certainly cannot say that I have recovered from the breakdown of my discipline. In this process, which developed after my forced departure from the platform and made me feel like I was acting more individually, I continue to write and read, though not as much as before. I also occasionally find the opportunity to work on my fiction, which I started on the same day, 20 June 2023. Yes, I was so excited that day that I also started writing my fiction, which I have now finished and made the necessary changes to.
Maybe that's why I feel a bit sad. Now it seems that I have faded away, instead of acting with all my ambition and fervour as I did last year.
I want to regain the desire I had then. One year on, I hope things are much better and that progress is being made. And I want to say that I am very tired of the fact that things are not progressing.
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