Reading · girl with a silver earring

How is it already July? It feels like it was winter just yesterday—but it also doesn’t. I’ve been living the hottest summer I’ve ever experienced for what feels like months now. It’s probably only been a couple weeks. Sometimes I get sad that I can’t physically feel the time passing. If we could, I imagine it would be like the way you feel yourself moving when you’re in a train, but you have no sense of direction or speed—it’s there, but it’s subtle. Why does it have to be this abstract? But maybe that’s a good thing. What a great thing it is not to feel its passing when it moves cruelly fast and brutally slow.

It’s been over a year and a half since I started writing on Substack. It doesn’t even feel like half that time, and yet I can’t remember what I did before then. It has been simply life changing to have a space where I can just talk about anything I want, completely removed from everyone I know.

I went through a lot of very big and very scary life changes in the last two years, that everything kind of feels like a fever dream. I’m in such a different place than I was back then, both physically and mentally, that I feel like a completely different person. And this—whatever this is—has been my biggest solace somehow.

This is very embarrassing to admit, but I often go about my day imagining teenager-me watching me through a lens. I guess I do this because it gives me comfort knowing that she would be so excited about my life now. Not my life as it was 2 or 3 years ago, but about my life now, yes. That doesn’t necessarily mean that I’m at a place in my life where I’m completely fulfilled, but that doesn’t seem like an impossible or even a far destination.

Writing, and sharing my writing on here makes me feel like I’m finally doing something worthy. I’ve always loved movies, I’ve always loved books and fashion and art. But now that one of them is actually my job, how do I keep my love for the others alive? Where do I put that passion?

I don’t know what I would do if I didn’t have this space where I can pour that energy into. Because I know what it feels like when it’s just stuck inside of you, with nowhere else to go. It’s the most frustrating thing in the world.

The other day I got a notification that someone who is in my contacts had joined Substack. When I went to check, to my horror, I saw that he had already subscribed to me. I blocked him immediately, of course. This has happened a few times since I started writing on here, which is quite inexplicable because I turn off my contact matching every time. Weird. (If he or any of my friends that I’ve blocked are somehow reading this, I’m sorry, please don’t take it personally. It’s just way too personal).

I appreciate what I can do on here, because more than anything, I don’t think I can ever be an actual writer. I can’t physically write anything that’s completely removed from my life, and therefore removed from me, as a person, and everything and everyone else in it. How do writers do it? How do they bare their hearts out to to the whole world? I don’t think I can be that vulnerable and strong at the same time.

Somehow, talking about all that I talk about on here is not something I could do with my friends, my family, or really anyone I know. But I have this little corner to myself where I can do that with all of you. And for that I’m eternally grateful.

My life has changed for the better since I started writing, and I know this is only the beginning. I’m so inspired by everyone that I’ve had the chance to connect with on here, and seeing the talent and the passion of others only inspires me to get better myself. I want to do better, I want to be better.

I’m inspired to spend my time doing things that I enjoy and things that are meaningful to me. Thanks to this platform I’ve clung to my hobbies more tightly than I did before. Watching movies and reading books bring me immense joy, and sharing that with others somehow makes it even more enjoyable. It seems so simple, and underwhelming, but it fulfills my soul in a way I hadn’t expected.

I know I kind of just write whatever comes to mind on here, so I appreciate everyone who stays and supports me through the many different topics that I write about.

I guess, what I’m trying to say is, I feel very grateful for this platform I have. I feel like I’m not using it to its full potential, and that I’m wasting it. Because I just always want to do more. And even though I’m not there yet, it’s a comfort knowing I have all this room to grow inside of me, and I have all this motivation to fuel me.

I simply want to see and do everything that I set my heart on. And there’s just so much I want to do.