DB

I have to make this blogpost. It’s going to be a short one. It’s a reminder.

I write to stave the void.

Is it to engage an algorithm? No. Regular posting is coincidentally good for algorithmic places and social media, but it’s not necessarily good for a blog. I think? I don’t know. Is it good to have regular “Content”? Maybe. I don’t know.

I wouldn’t be writing if I didn’t want attention. I do. I want attention. That’s why I perform. That’s why I write. That’s why I tell stories. I want to be seen by other people, to know that I matter, and to be listened to. It’s all that we want, socially, from other people. To feel like we belong and to feel that others are like us. Because if other people are like us, then we are not alone.

Attention, yes. Algorithm, not necessarily. To fight, yes.

I’ve spent years living with, surviving, and living with depression. Its ghost lives in me. I know that its whispers come when I am not moving, when I am not with people, and when my triggers are set. Until I fully understand the enemy, I need to keep fighting so that it doesn’t take too much when I let down my guard.

I fight for another moment. A lot of my art lives in a moment, and it cannot be experienced outside of it. It’s what I find wonderful about TTRPGs, improv, and finding the right story for the right person. I have two moments that I know, where me and someone else–a player, and a reader–were able to get to a vulnerable place and break each others hearts. It was wonderful.

I fight for those moments.

I fight for the ones that don’t shed tears, but the ones that nestle my shared audience-players in warmth. Something that feels like home, when I know that the world and sometimes your own thoughts can feel like hell. Rest, and reward, for the time they’ve graced me with their attention, and that we share together.

I fight for that warmth.

And I remember the books that I’ve read as a child, the many more that I will read today, and the hundreds and thousands that I will read and experience until my end. Being transported to another world for a moment–and linking back and finding those experiences to draw into my own life. Connections, insights to the past, and guides for the future. And well, perhaps none of those at all but some full-hearted fun.

I write for those experiences.

Sometimes it comes in my prep, and more than not in comes in play. But it’s about a lot of things, and it’s important to me. Even if…uh…even if the quality of the writing because of the regular updates are not up to snuff. Maybe there’s something there–for me, or someone else, to grow into something bigger.

That’s the hope. And hell, that’s what writing is.