One // creating sometimes takes deflating

this time last year I spent most of my time avoiding the stacks of assignments piling up on my desk and in my agenda and reliving test anxiety by not taking tests. With all this free time on my hands, I literally had no clue what to do other than reblog reblog reblog until my wrists got sore and my eyes got numb from staring at the computer for so long. I guess now your expecting some life changing event where I started kicking around a soccer ball and got recruited to play for the 2016 women's olympic soccer team but sadly that's not the case. I basically started "blogging" (you'll understand why I use quotes later on).

I think my initial interest in blogging was that nobody I knew had an actual blog, meaning no one could find my blog if I decided to share my thoughts about people or things I hated about my school, the people I'm around daily, or my life. I then realized that blogging is a whole other subset to social media. Bloggers that I loved seemed to bond with each other like family, and  most of them I observed blogged from humble beginnings and weekly posts, to then later transforming their photography, writing and the ever so hard battle of blogging which is writing with your personality. This attracted me to blogging because of my insecurities with writing in general. I figured if I blogged and followed the template of these other girls then I could be just like them, just as happy as them, just as cool as them, and maybe even just as good a writer a they were. However, in doing so I created another so called front and I went full speed ahead towards blogging without realizing in a form of art so ancient and so misconceived I was losing the one trait that all good writers have; a voice.

a little piece I posted on my (journal) tumblr

Forcing myself to write was not supposed to be a bad thing. It's supposed to help me recollect about the happenings of my week. It's supposed to create a discipline in which I follow a routine, and while having too much routine in life can be tiring a small thing that someone practices daily isn't so much a routine as it is tool for creating some peacefulness or some mindfulness within our subconscious; our freaking minds. So to make a long story short, I was doing the whole"blogging" thing all wrong. But I recently started typing up little thoughts and spending time reflecting on these ideas and just exploring them, which honestly made it easier to write; it added a purpose to what I was doing. Another beauty to these posts I created was that they were scribbles on my mind. I didn't go back and edit them to sound like myself, or to have better vocabulary or grammar. I left them as they were. This realization has been long awaited because I love writing but at the same time I hate to write. I guess with this blog is a challenge to myself, to be okay with editing or not editing a post. To be honest and just recollect about my week if that's all I really feel like doing. Writing takes a lot of patience for me, because after posting this I will literally read it twenty times and it will never feel right. But I recently saw this video about a visual artist and designer named James White, who said, "Creatively I don't think I'll ever be satisfied, because being satisfied to me means being complacent, and I'd rather be into creativity for the journey not the destination." After deflating more blogs and creative platforms than I can count I think I want to try and stick with this "blogging" thing for a while. At least until I can become a little more comfortable with writing in general.

- casey

p.s. this quote means more than being 17 to me.

p.s.s. here's a great song that you should bless your ears with. (I have a sorta weird/electic taste in music so if you don't like this it is alright with me) also this one that's original music from this awesome feature film.