a slight crisis

january has left me particularly dormant. my seasonal depression has been hitting me later and later into the winter with every year, and i think my transition to the new year was especially rough this time.

i'm experiencing some form of creative identity crisis or impostor syndrome, where i feel undeserving of calling myself a creator if i haven't been able to create anything of note lately. this is bad because i've largely based my identity on my ability to create things and create them well.

i haven't completed any of my projects—the sense of novelty and accomplishment i felt upon learning how to code my website has naturally tapered off—despite doing nothing but working on them. (or at least, it feels like i've been doing nothing but working on my projects.)

i've come to realize that most of my best works were motivated by spite, and i keep looking back at my previous self and all the cool shit they've done out of resentment. i don't feel spite that much anymore, and i think that is its own form of growth—but it has caused some stagnation in other major parts of my life.

i don't know what i am when i don't have current works to prove it. my creative projects are evidence of my existence and intellectual place in the world. they can't be powered by something as self-destructive as spite.

i've been toying around with a lot of ideas lately, mostly to encourage myself to work on anything. i finally set up my obsidian workspace to make room for my thoughts, and i successfully found a linux distro that integrates nicely with my workflow. (i recommend zorin os for those who've felt any sort of friction with mint. it's more forgiving to those more unfamiliar with CLIs.)

i've been thinking about making videos again, which is something i didn't think i'd ever want to do again ever since i made video editing my career. it would... just be nice to finally return to my earliest creative passion and have fun with it the way i want to.

i often personify the pressure to refine my work to be more consumable as the "hypothetical voyeur" in my head. it's hard not to create without keeping it in mind, especially since so much of my professional work is meant for mass consumption. i want what i make to be good, and i want people to tell me that what i make is good.

i want to build a healthier relationship with the act of creating something purely for myself, where the nature of its consumption is an afterthought. i think this is a good place to start.