When You Listen to the World do You Hear Yourself?

The day is hazy, when it started it seemed like morning mist or the haze that promises a humid and warm summer day. It was neither. It was forest fires from a province over that got caught on the wind and drifted along the great lake to the bay. The long marsh grasses barely stir in the slight breeze though I could see trees shift listlessly in the breeze. The surface of the water is uneven with patches seeming utterly still and tranquil while others drift along. There is a red squirrel in the distance making sure everyone is aware that they are trespassing. Unseen birds in the thicket make their calls, or it could be frogs. I haven't gotten the ear to distinguish them just yet. A Metis flag, blue with a white infinity symbol on it, ripples proudly at the shore. It is held up by a piece of drift wood jammed into a pipe of a ramshackle dock.

The side of my hair that has been left long is tied back to keep it out of my eyes with a blue hair tie. I have actually gotten used to and liking this look, especially when one or two hairs come loose. I'm wearing a muscle shirt because I am prepared to sweat and get dirty. My old jeans fit the bill for this, thought I tend to not use them like this because they very comfy. My left arm is covered in dirt from lifting a dock that is already held in the air by a front loader. My head is fixed on the task, constantly try to evaluate angles and force to make this go as painlessly as possible. While I am try to devise a plan there something of a buzz in my mind. The specter of a poor nights sleep and the dwindling caffeine from the morning doing its best to keep it at bay.

I am being told that a tire needs to move over by my Father. He has an idea in mind but I am seeing him attempt to force the tire over. The majority of the day has been whittling away at my limited patience (due to the poor sleep and a prior week of anxiety) and my physical capacity (also taxed due to moving high tension wires to even be able to use the tires as well as relocating a wood pile). It is near lunch, I have opted to attempt to finish this off before eating. I started the day thinking at least this could be done. It could not.

After lifting the dock the pipe meant to go in falls. All of my willingness to continue and my motivation to put my strength towards this disappears. All of the "Don't be frustrated" and "why are you mad?" conversations that popped up through the day as I tried to think about how something was going to work compile. My mind, the clever and hurtful thing that it is, latches on to "Everything that you wanted to do was either ignored or was wrong. If you simply went along with the plan then you would not be upset."

I hate all of that. I do not want to be an unthinking tool. Yet, it is easier to follow through on someone's ideas than create and follow through on your own. It is easier to be the person that someone needs than being yourself and doing what you need. I have done that for so long it feels like I have forgotten how to write and just do things for myself. Even eating and drinking at times feels like I need to contextualize it as purposeful. I enjoy cooking but I also look for leftovers because it makes room in the fridge and makes sure to not make it go bad. I also don't want to be a hypocrite. I ask people to eat and drink water and sleep because I care about them.

Having a goal or a dream feels like you need to be a bit delusional. We live in a horrible world that forces every idea through the gaze of marketability and the gaze of the masses. How can you create something for yourself when you are not the target? Are you meant to simply write a webcomic that is never meant to be put online? Are you meant to animate shows just for you to watch? I don't want that, I want to share what I have made. I want to be understood through my work. I want people to find me. I feel like it is a losing game.

The closer I come to being a writer the more it feels like I am meant to write other people's ideas in a style they like. I need to put myself on the shelf and be that writer. Flexibility is a trait I value until it is all I do. I am good at what I do because I can change and adapt. It is what I know. Being the person someone needs for the situation. I keep falling into this hole. This hole is not shaped for me and yet I fit.

I want to write something that does not shy away from what it is. I am unbothered about it being like something else. What bothers me is when arbitrary rules force something to be different. When audiences aren't trusted to be smart enough to put things together or have the attention span to remember a detail. I have engaged with so much media that is combed over in such minute detail to find tiny crumbs of context towards the narrative.

I just get scared. I feel like I don't have the tools or the capacity. I feel like I am going to be written off as the equivalent of all of the other creatives that have big ideas that fester in the corners of social media with the promises that were made about them. I want to write big things. I want to write good things. It still feels like no matter how much I do that if it is not finished then it doesn't matter. Even finished things can gather dust though. It all feels uncertain.

I am always envious of artists because of all of this. They can just post their work and people can look at it. They can take in the colours and the lines. They can take it at face value in an instant or linger and think on it longer. People can't do that with writing. No matter how long you stare at a page of writing you will not garner any appreciation of the narrative. You need to take in every letter to make words, words to make sentences, sentences to make paragraphs, and so on. You need to commit to it. It takes time and effort. I know I often do not have the capacity to read for large periods of time so I can't blame other people.

I guess, what this all boils down to is I want something tangible from my effort but to get that I need something tangible. It is getting hard to trust in the process or that my work will eventually do all the talking. It might be that everyone feels this way. For me, though, I feel like an impatient child begging for attention. Really getting to the "no take, only throw" part of this. I just feel like every idea right now has so little certainty behind it that they are hard to pursue.

Its been like that for so long that I genuinely can't tell you what my dream is. If I had to describe something it would just be living somewhere with my s/o and being able to make enough from writing to pursue my side-projects. If I could ask for a bit more it would be that those side-projects had some fans that were genuinely excited to see updates on them. I think that is all I could ask for. That doesn't feel like a dream though, that sounds like settling. A dream to me is something big and huge that is impossible but you are going to try your hardest to get there. Maybe all I want is comfort, maybe I am depressed.

Whatever it is it feels like to get anywhere right now I either need to fight to be myself or simply agree and do the thing. I am so tired of it. I am tired of feeling too much or too little. I am tired of people being off put by my venting when they do the same all the time. I am tired of putting effort into something only for people to immediately brush it off. I am tired of me not being a calm center to a situation to be cause for alarm for everyone involved...

I finally know who I am but the world around me wants something else