Dear OLIVIA,
That’s so kind Liv, thanks a million for real. And I definitely have a writing bug, that’s for sure. Idk!! It’s pretty hard to articulate what it is I’m trying to say, I suppose. It’s weird talking about yourself sometimes, but just as necessary when the pursuit of your disciplines comes at a cost. I’ve spent so much time alone over the years, and since I was young, my passion has always resided somewhere within my own curiosity and openness. At times I feel like everyone up here thinks I’m strange or something. Maybe I have managed to think my way far, far into it. I have a hard time behaving any other way though. After long enough, I think you begin to prefer being alone in your life.
I’m not some hermit sitting around in a library all day, but truly, certain things matter so much more to me now than I care to admit. And the more I pursue comfort, the further away I seem to find myself from connection.
I digress, but you’re right, it’s definitely a bit of writing lol. And I don’t use AI for anything besides organisation and memory management across multiple projects. My first writing project started in 2019, before any of this really existed. I quit my job at Olive Garden and locked myself in my room for a couple of days. Emotionally, I had no reservoir left. I missed my Nana and regretted silencing my phone all those months, and not being close enough to change the paths things had already taken. Then my father passed away shortly after.
For a while I thought about changing my name and relocating somewhere, taking nothing but the books. But that was scary too. Eventually I realised people don’t really care about your name anyway. They care about how well you know it yourself, and that’s it. So changing your name doesn’t work, unless of course one starts brand new in a different Place, in another world entirely. Even then you can’t run from what you chase.
Eventually I figured some of it out, or at least figured out that I had to confront the chasm I’d built behind closed doors, and within all those gaps of silence filling rooms where conversations were being held and I was expected to be present in them. There is a strange point where solitude stops being somewhere you retreat to and becomes somewhere you begin constructing yourself from. Writing became the instrument that let me cross back and forth without completely disappearing into either side.
Writing has saved my life in that sense. It gave me an instrument for compartmentalising my own internal experiences without having to reduce them. And the more you engage that muscle, the more it seems to vivify the Mind. You become increasingly sensitive to those invisible worlds where creativity, intuition and possibility all emerge at once. Not necessarily somewhere mystical or distant either. Sometimes they emerge directly within the center of the pen, at precisely the point where concentration becomes deep enough that you stop trying to manufacture the thought and begin following wherever it was already going.
Sorry to bore you. And it’s not a good excuse, but I also have been writing all day 😅
CAMIGULA