Empty Promises

This is long. I understand if you don't want to read it.

I keep doing it.

I've made 18 posts, all of which I'm pretty sure I said something about bettering my writing and making myself better.

And no progress has been made. I haven't touched this keyboard creatively in over 2 years now.

I'm working as a locksmith now. I get downtime between jobs that could be used for writing. I nap instead. I'm not really tired, just getting in what rest I can just in case I decide to work overtime. I never really work overtime.

I have grand plans for stories. Extensive documentation of concepts. Or at least I used to. They were saved on my student account in High School, and I forgot to transfer them before I graduated. Years of planning for various stories lost to the uncaring void of the school department's data wipe. Millions of words. Dozens of pictures. A complex arcane system that I designed specifically for use within my universe.

I covered a ton of topics. Material enchantments, spell imbuements, runic magic, natural vs. learned magic, attunements, spellcraft, and various applications of all the aforementioned. I had designed a few hundred symbols to symbolize various aspects of these systems. Formulas to calculate the relative power of certain spells as compared to each other. Numerical figures on the amount of damage that x amount of y explosive type would cause, and applications of said figures to categorize certain spells.

I had created this immensely complex system simply because I wanted to, and once it was created, I'd work on simplifying things where I could. But I felt that magic is an immense topic to grapple with. It shouldn't just be summed up to a 'because magic' I wanted to make a system that I could believe in. Magitech. Implied long-running clean energy sources through the use of imbued gems. Civilian, police, and military-grade applications of all the same principles.

All this to develop a system that would take a sort of back-burner in my grandest project. I had such drive at the time, but once that work was lost? All of my aspirations went with it. I couldn't drag myself back to the keyboard to recreate it. It would be of similar tier to spending thousands of hours in a hardcore survival game only to lose it all to a bug. Time that I can never get back lost to something that shouldn't be.

It's my fault, though. I can't blame it on some fluke, bug, or issue. It was simply my negligence that led to this. I keep trying to pick up the drive to continue my work. To force myself to recreate this system, and to finish it. It's just such a daunting task and I don't even remember where I began the first time.

Maybe it's a sign that I'm not cut out for this project. I see it in my mind. It's there, laid out in my head like a grand piece of art, but my hands simply aren't talented enough to bring it into reality. My will isn't strong enough to see the project through, and it frustrates me to no end.

I'm not a talented writer. I can tell a great story verbally, but when I go to put it on paper? It doesn't work. I've even tried recording myself and just writing what I say, but it doesn't look good on paper. I try to be consistent, but chaos and disorganization seep into my work, and I lose track of where I am. I never know if I'm just starting a story, or trying to finish it.

All this to say that I can torture myself until the end of time trying to put together a perfect piece, but I've come to the realization.

It can't be done. I need to STOP striving for perfection. I need to be realistic. My aspirations are simply unachievable, and that's the hardest thing I've ever had to tell myself. I've decided to altogether put my most major project on hold. Go back to basics. Now, my basics were garbage. I've made a few startup attempts, and people have seen those and told me their thoughts. I have looked back and I agree, though I have to forgive myself because I was but a middle-schooler at the time.

Oh, thinking back the days where I would just write whatever came to my little head. It sounded oh-so-good when writing it, and then I would post it and regret it even before the first comments came in. 'I could have done better. I SHOULD have done better.' The only thoughts on my mind were my inadequacies, but I never actually took any steps to improve.

I have several concept stories in my list. Just sitting there waiting for me. All I have to do is write them.

Can't be that hard, right?