12/7 polaroid photo walk

12/8 festival of life

12/11 volez voguez voyagez

12/19 date night

12/23 christmas adam

Do you know what it's like being a writer? Imagine the way Neo sees the matrix. It's all scrolling green zeros and ones, right? Ok so it's basically like that but instead of numbers, you see the world in spell check. I'm not even kidding. So then your friends (the ones who can still talk to you because, bless them, they love you in spite of your constant corrections) look to you as their lifelong dictionary/thesaurus. So you get a lot of "how do you spell *blank*? Oh, I thought so, I just wanted to make sure" or "...what's the word I'm looking for...? No, not that but it has a similar meaning." And everything you read (especially other peoples posts on social media), you secretly edit because most of the people you know have spent at least thirteen years in school and at most twenty-five, and STILL don't know the difference between there, their and they're.

And that's only how it affects other people. Imagine turning that on yourself. They say that you are your worst critic. I think that's especially true of people who create. Whether it's poetry or prose, photography or paintings, every form of artist has critics but none more harsh than themselves. As a writer, you will write a million drafts of the same thing and feel that each one was worse than the last. And because writer's block is actually Satan, he will convince you that you need to write about the stupidest things because it's better than nothing. Also, writers generally love to read so they'll spend a lot of time reading some of the most amazing work and think to themselves, "I am a literary duck."

Honestly, I don't know. Maybe this is all writers. Maybe not. It definitely applies to this writer though. I often think about how J. K. Rowling was so freaking brilliant because she created this whole new world and not only made people believe it but made people want to be a part of it so bad that I'm still waiting for my Hogwarts letter. But then she went beyond that. She created Luna Lovegood, this quirky weirdo who believed in some completely, ridiculously impossible things, thereby creating make believe within her world of make believe. I can hardly wrap my mind around the genius of it. And of course she wasn't always what she is now. And I'm sure there were days when things really sucked for her and she probably thought to herself "this is stupid, nobody's gonna want to read a book about a wizard going to school. Teenagers hate school! And then there's this weird girl...what the hell is a wrackspurt anyway? I should stop." But I'm glad she didn't. As much as it kinda sucks to be a writer at times, it's so fulfilling and deeply rewarding to those who are truly passionate about it. And I'm guessing it'll be a loooooong time before I pen my own Harry Potter but it's cool. Writing has always been my favorite form of self expression and writing for a bunch of randos on the internet is good enough for me.