I’ve dabbled in writing for a while, but I’ve never had the guts to really commit to it.

There’s the excuse of me being too busy in college, of course, but deep down I know that’s not the case. Had I truly been motivated, there was more than enough time for me to spend on productive writing instead of taking naps, playing video games, or whatever else I did in the lonely hours of the pandemic. Looking back at everything, I feel a slight twinge of regret: while the time I spent on other things was not necessarily time wasted, it was certainly time that could have been better spent. Would it really have been too much to make space for an hour of writing a day? (A lifetime of procrastination suggests that yes, it would have.)

Nevertheless, the turning point for me was one particular class that I took in my senior year. En 086, Fiction and Creative Nonfiction Writing, an odd class to take in a STEM-dominated university like mine. I took a gamble, and it paid off wonderfully–with a few trials and tribulations–and a passion was awoken in me that felt surprisingly familiar. I didn’t fully realize why until later, but in the moment it didn’t matter. Assignment after assignment in that class demanded new ways for me to spin stories. Characters. Suspense. Dialogue. Taking the ideas that floated in my mind and giving them shape, like an alchemist breathing life into homunculi. I’m not embarrassed to say that I paid more attention in that class than in any other college course.

As much fun as I had, the class ended with a stressful final manuscript that left me unsatisfied. The idea behind the story was solid, sure, but it lacked everything else. Ask any entrepreneur and they’ll tell you that an idea by itself is meaningless: ideas are a dime a dozen and rarely followed up upon. How many of us spend hours scheming up “the next big thing” only to wake up the next morning believing it to be doomed to fail? I wanted to develop the manuscript more but was gripped by a sudden hesitation. It didn’t help that after the class ended, there were no weekly assignments to keep me on track, no professor to watch over my shoulder. I’ve always been a “burns twice as bright, half as long” kind of individual, and this raised a very pressing question: could I stick with writing for the long-term?

The answer for the next few months was a resounding “nope.” At the risk of sounding defensive, there really were other factors that stifled my motivation. For example, I had recently been informed that I would need to take an additional term of college to complete my graduation requirements, forcing me to reconsider my future options. Academics were as brutal as always, and the cherry on top was me desperately trying to find a summer job. Still, a single smoldering shard of resistance remained, refusing to fizzle out. It just needed more kindling.

The fire was stoked when I was seized by a sudden nostalgia late one night and I decided to go through several haphazardly sorted folders from years past on Google Drive. I eventually found my way to a folder dating back to high school, back when I edited for the school newspaper. I opened the folder, expecting to see nothing more than a few copy-edited restaurant reviews and school district drama, but instead came across five text files, each one labeled with the unassuming “Untitled document.” Curiosity got the better of me and I double-clicked on the first file. I started reading from the top of the page.

And read.

And read some more.

Ten minutes later I finished reading and leaned back in my chair. I was shocked. The document had held a short story I’d written back in the day, a sci-fi work that I might have planned to publish in the newspaper. What shocked me wasn’t that the story was good, because it really wasn’t–the characters were flat as a board, the descriptions a bit too long-winded, the ending left in ambiguity. No, what got me was the sheer passion with which the work was written. Seventeen-year-old me had been consumed with desire to write, to create something utterly and completely unique and magical and brilliant. I had a taste of the excitement I must have held, and it was that same electric that ran through me in En 086.

My greatest fear then, as it still is now, is that I can no longer harness that passion. There must have been a time in high school where I could sit down and spin pages upon pages of content in a single sitting. I no longer have that endurance, and my approach to writing is a more cautious and picky one. Still, there is no time like the present to write, especially now: having graduated, the burden of academia has been temporarily lifted (grad school remains as a hovering question mark in my mind, but that’s a concern for later). My hope is that, over the course of the next year, I can come to form writing as a serious habit–and what better way to do that then in the form of a blog? I don’t expect to create masterpieces any time soon, but having my work out there is an open-ended way for me to test the waters and receive even the tiniest amount of feedback.

To anyone who has read this far, or read anything I have written at all, thanks! I hope I can one day create something that will take you for a ride.