Thinking, Feeling, Doing

My Wattpad Disappearance

This is an in-depth telling as to why I had been so inactive from Wattpad for two - three years. I feel as if it would be interesting to tell about.

I also want to define what I mean by "inactive". This means I haven't posted anything for three years. I would check it from time to time but that was mostly to see if there were any messages and certain notifications.

I would also like to say that HOLY CRAP how did my one story get over 40,000 views? I may even need to write a whole chapter about this like thank you guys so much. Its hard to believe that my creativity has reached so many people. I wrote that when I was five years younger than I am now. I feel as if I'm the same person, but yet have some drastic changes.

In that time I have watched a lot more anime, but I have also begun to have other interests as well which took me away from creative writing online. One of these interests include computer programming which I am currently specializing in at school.

But anywho, let's get into the factors that play into why I sort of disappeared. 

1. School 

I mean... this is usually the main reason the majority of users leave social media websites or take a break from them. Being in school takes up a lot of your time no matter what level of schooling you are in. This is because of the relationships that you create with others during school, learning, homework, and possible volunteering or sports. 

I feel as though personally I had and still have a huge academic focus when it comes to school. It took some time away from things I used to like doing in younger years like writing. When you are forced to write in school, you start to resent it because you are only forced to create a specific kind of document or written piece of work. 

It's weird because when you start out in public school you are told to be creative with writing, but at the same time focus on grammar and spelling. Once you are in higher tiers of education (high school and college) there is more of a focus on writing "properly", but when you're forced to write this way it takes away from enjoyment and creativity in writing.

Don't get me wrong, I actually don't mind writing essays, but the problem for me is that there is such a focus on getting every single part of a rubric's criteria correct that it's hard to produce something that is creative. For example, most of the assignments I do have to write are memos or cited essays. 

I think overall, school sort of drove me a little bit away from writing creatively online. 

2. Relationships 

WHAT THIS MEANS IS JUST RELATIONSHIPS IN GENERAL WITH PEOPLE, not intimate relationships. I've learned that as I have gotten older I've been valuing more of the relationships that I have with people. During high school it was hard because I was moving very far away from my friends (as in across the country). I really missed them and felt sad sometimes and mainly focused on using more "social" websites to meet friends online like Anime Amino (now just known as Amino I think) and Smash Amino. It was hard moving somewhere where I didn't know anyone at first... 

But then once I moved and settled in it felt like I had made more friends, and I was trying to focus on making friends as well which took away from this time. I have also noticed that as I have gotten older that I haven't been drawing as much either (I used to all the time). 

Relationships is another thing that your brain likes to focus on it seems.

3. Working/Adulting

As much as I would like to say I'm fairly relaxed I'm rEaLlY nOt aHaHaHaAaAa. (:P) I have been working ever since I have been in high school. I think it's good to get a job but at the same time you do need to relax whenever you're in school. For me, I was working usually four days a week while I was in school. Now I only work weekends (well except when they book me for like four days a week and I tell them to stop and they DON'T).

Um but besides that... work also took up a large portion of my life in the past two - three years, and this also links back to relationships with people I worked with and how that took time as well.

Once piece of advice though, don't let work take advantage of you being a good worker. I know I work very hard when it comes to my quality of work. Just don't give in.

Also working a retail job for many years kind of takes a toll on your stress level as well... like sometimes you feel pressured to get things done in a short amount of time for VERY LITTLE pay... Considering I could be working on developing software for different companies, it makes me feel not as good being there because I feel like I can do SO MUCH BETTER but because I don't have that little piece of paper yet (a diploma) I can't do anything until then... 

Work definitely has a toll on your mental state. 

4. YouTube

OKAY, I know what you're thinking.... What do I mean by "YouTube"? Well... whenever I feel as though I want to relax I always go to YouTube because there's just so much great content in which you can just zone out to and learn things through.

Whenever I have free time this is mostly what I do, and have been doing for the past... Three years? No probably more like five years (since Game Grumps were around). 

I wouldn't TECHNICALLY call it procrastination because I'm learning stuff right? (Aniki-Kai... Stop making excuses god dammit). It's honestly just a great escape.

I know that's bad to say but SCHOOL AND WORK AND VOLUNTEERING ALL AT THE SAME TIME WHILE YOU HAVE LIKE FOUR ASSIGNMENTS A WEEK AND ONE TEST A WEEK IS SO TIRING.... (high school kids plz don't fight me but college is way worse LMAO)  

So I use it as my escape I guess. ;) 

5. Length of Time Taken to Write Stories

Again, this one is probably going to sound weird but I feel as though the last main reason I sort of left Wattpad was because of the fact that stories took so long to come up with. 

I don't just mean writing the stories themselves, I also mean coming up with the ideas for them and then writing the characters in a specific way that would sound good.

Like for certain lines of dialog (I'm going to use Goku and Vegeta as an example). Let's say they're about to fight a bad guy or in a certain situation, I would mimic how their behavior was in the series so for Goku I would write "This sounds like fun! I wanna see how strong you are" versus Vegeta who would be written more like "Come on you putrid worm, I'll pummel you into the ground" (that kind of thing). For a younger mind, it's harder to do that in a shorter period of time.

ALSO I would have considered myself an average typer back then (I would finish a 1000 page chapter in like 2 hours...) because I would come up with the idea, and then write the dialog or enviornment the story was placed in.

But NOW I can type things a lot quicker. (this chapter was around 1500 words long and took me like fifty minutes sooo....) But that's also because I use programming languages on a daily basis and write emails and write assignments... (you get the point I type a crap ton) 

Conclusion

I guess what I can sum up all of this as is...

1. I had other focuses throughout the years in regards to my real life.

2. School sort of made it so I lacked a certain level of creativity in regards to writing stories.

3. I also felt in a way that I was almost getting too old to write things like fanfiction.

4. Adulting sucks.

5. Real life sometimes sucks too. 

I hope this kind of clears things up... If anyone has any questions though feel free to ask honestly in the comments. :)