I have to spend so much time lying down! It's so boring!! But unfortunately, my quest to find something vaguely more productive than doomscrolling gave me a Wattpad addiction. I can finally write again, but it's on a community that doesn't do anything but bizarre and contrived romance. What an embarrassing hobby!
I have to lay down a lot throughout the day, especially immediately following chemo treatments. The only thing that's really comfortable to do is to emulate PS2 games on my laptop, but spending that much time playing games makes me feel kind of guilty. (Not gonna lie, I still spent an obscene amount of hours in one week playing Digital Devil Saga until I deleted my save while updating my OS...But still, lol.) I wish I could write or draw or sew or code or do anything, but it's very uncomfortable and inconvenient.
Even though I'm a millennial, I'm just not that comfortable using my phone, so I couldn't work out a good way to write. Most of the apps are ugly, tedious, and use some annoying markdown language anyway, and I'm very picky. I've exclusively used Zenwriter or its Linux-friendly alternative FocusWriter since high school. But of all apps in the world, Wattpad clicks with me.
To me, Wattpad will always be in that cluster of sites frequented by early net girls like Mixpod, Photobucket, Livejournal, and all the random Neopets knock-offs. It had the cheesiest fanfics and RPs with amateur coverart of dragons and stolen anime images. I'm not above that stuff, but it's pretty funny to be drawn to a writing app with a community like that.
The community isn't like that anymore, though! I don't know if everyone grew up or if the same 00s crowd is chilling in their own little enclave, but the entire front page has alpha wolves and billionaires and submissive wives. Awkward. But whatever. I could look around for communities that cater to adventure, fantasy, and supernatural genres, but last time I did that, it was a bunch of lame isekai websites or websites that pressure you into acting like a super professional author.
Just so long as I can write, it's no big deal.
It's kind of hard to get to my hard drive and backup my old stories, so I've been rewriting everything from scratch. My stories exist as a safe place to explore ideas, making their value lie more in the writing process than in finished, published works. As they naturally evolve alongside me as I grow and face different issues, there’s really no single fixed version to regret losing.
However, as an adult, I lost the need for creative writing. I can meet people for serious conversations, go wherever I want to decompress, and resolve many of my problems without parental interference. If I have troubles, I simply fix them or talk things out with friends. It’s been about ten years since I wrote consistently. But after dealing with cancer and being confined to bed, I’ve lost much of that freedom. Maybe that's sad, but it has rekindled my love for writing. It's been nice to reconnect with my old imaginary friends and their strange, allegorical scenarios.
Since I wrote for myself and was never been drawn to the idea of publishing, I was always happy to keep my stories tucked away in my head or lost hard drives. Using Wattpad without the "publish" button feels cowardly, though. Some of my stories are awkward, some are from my edgy teenage years, and none are perfectly polished. But why not share them?
My goal is to host at least one chapter from each story, along with some of my short works. There are so many: Newcomer, Fergoes, Dymn, One Step Over, Guardian, 13th, my Guild Wars 1 fanfictions, Hello Traveler, all my Oblivion fanfictions, Beloved of the Moon, Home, my Flight Rising fanfiction, Blessfrey, Lemonland... so many about Trace, Nephele, and Freefall. It’s not a realistic goal, but it'd be cute to have at least some representation.
I don't trust webservices to stay around or honor my right to my own content, so I spent today backing up my Wattpad chapters on blessfrey.me, too. I'd hate to lose my stories due to some dumb company. While it’s not great web practice to have so many links on my navigation panel, I might as well include one for stories. There was always a stories section on my website, but it was unlisted and only accessible through individual character pages. It also had some bugs, but I think I’ve ironed those out today. So...cute, right? I’ve got little stories for my portfolio!
I never feel 100% confident about sharing my thoughts and creative works. It’s not about being shy—I’m dorky with zero shot at being cool, so there’s nothing to lose in letting people see my bad art. I'm not really in an influencer position, either. If you're on here, it’s because we’re friends and you're curious about what I'm up to, not because this is some fancy soapbox for pushing agendas.
Still, there’s something about it that feels like self-praise. I'm not sure how online hosting feels that much different than keeping everything in my personal diary and cluttered hard drive, but it just does. I've even occasionally felt the need to justify my work by publishing it. My Godot games, especially, are hard to dig out of their repo, but it's validating to host them here. More than that, I feel like I shouldn’t be so secretive and protective of my creative stuff—like I should leave something behind that others can see, considering my health. Not that anything will happen to me, but still, it has crossed my mind.
Along this line, there’s a song by Mission of Burma that irritates me. It’s called "Reach for My Revolver," and the lyric goes: "A friend of mine once told me, / His one and only aim. / To build a giant castle, / And in it sign his name. / Sign it with complete community." That kind of mindset really irritates me. A lot of kids in my class growing up said they wanted to be one of those bolded names in their history textbook. Regardless of whether they want to help society or not, it's detestable to me. Not only are true lasting marks like that rare--we didn’t even study presidents past Nixon--what kind of value is a mark anyway? So what if you do get your lasting monument? Even if it's a mark for some great unifying deed or whatever. You and anyone in your "complete community" you ever knew would be too dead to care.
It just seems like a total subversion of Scripture to me. Building a castle and signing your own name in it is some Absalom-tier vanity.
2 Samuel 18:18
Now Absalom in his lifetime had taken and set up for himself the pillar
that is in the King's Valley, for he said, “I have no son to keep my
name in remembrance.” He called the pillar after his own name, and
it is called Absalom's monument to this day.
Yet he ended up buried in a pit, covered with stones (2 Samuel 18:17). That monument means next to a disgraceful grave.
Compare that to a promise in Revelation. Now I don't really know who the church of Philadelphia is, but still, when God tells someone He's building them as a pillar and writing His name on them, that sounds like a real, lasting crown. And they receive this mark not by being a great political leader or having glorious hair or whatever Absalom and the bold-term textbook crowd pursue, but by keeping God's Word.
Revelation 3:12
"The one who conquers, I will make him a pillar in the temple of my
God. Never shall he go out of it, and I will write on him the name of
my God, and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem,
which comes down from my God out of heaven, and my own new
name."
There’s such a difference between building a legacy for yourself and receiving a lasting crown from God. I much prefer Paul's way of living quietly and not worrying about the fickle admiration of men.
Though it's just natural that life involves more than becoming a being of pure service to God. People are going to rest, be creative, and journal. I don’t think it’s wrong to gather your works in one place. It just feels weird sometimes. That's why it's really comforting to hear from friends, especially ones I haven't seen in a long while, that my blog comes across as a small expression of faith. Thanks.
Go do something cooler than listening to post-punk bands and writing on Wattpad. Unlike me lol but whatever. Have a fun day. :)