I have a lot of ideas
A lot of thoughts.
A lot of dreams to pursue.
So much passion...
And generally, I feel that people are flippin' ignorant of these facts.
Forgive me if I seem whiny, or arrogant.
But I wrote more than 1500 pages of random ideas, by hand, during high school.
I did a lot of that writing in front of other people (at the lunch table, etc.)
And most of the time this was ignored.
Not that I was ostracized or anything.
No one really rebuked me for my creativity.
But still, I would have loved to discuss my ideas at length.
And generally the conversation went like this:
Person: "What are you writing?"
Me: "All sorts of random ideas! I've got hundreds of pages of stuff and I can go on for hours if you want me to..."
Person: "Oh, that's interesting"
(Person changes the subject, or talks to someone else)
Part of this is my fault, I suppose. I have not made use of every opportunity to talk with people. I developed the habit of assuming that no one wants to listen.
So, people, if you're willing to listen, please let me know.
Emma once told me that I can be intimidating when I talk about creativity, because I have so much to say that my audience doesn't necessarily understand. Even before Emma made this comment, I have always been concerned that I might dominate a conversation in a way that makes other people uncomfortable. One time Dacuma was at my house, and I started describing all my game ideas (Dacuma was studying game design), and his response was basically "Um, yeah man...I've gotta go..." and he left after a little while. Now, maybe he actually had somewhere to go. Or maybe he just got tired of hearing me talk. In either case, he's never asked me about the game ideas that I never finished describing.
On the other hand, we
did mkae Covert Classmates together (along with a bunch of other friends), so it's not like I'm completely ignored. It's just...I dream of infinity, and I guess I'm asking for infinite attention. Which is unreasonable, of course.
I have a vague sense that people don't trust me to actually do anything with all these ideas I have. I remember last summer announcing to my family that I planned on writing a novel. The response was strictly neutral, like "Oh, that's nice.", like they didn't expect this novel to be written. And to be fair, I've made
precious little measurable progress on that novel. But that's partially because I always have dozens of ideas at once, and I work with whatever suits me at the moment. It may also be related to laziness or fear on my part, I don't know. The point is: no one seemed excited.
Again, to be fair, this is not always so. Last halloween my parents took me out to dinner, and I was stunned (and pleased) that they spent the whole time listening to a sci-fi idea I have called the Duke of Sol. But since then, I have not brought up the subject, and neither have they. Perhaps I assume that they do not want to listen, and they assume that I do not want to speak.
This is a long-running thing, really. I remember being, I don't know, about 9 years old or something, inventing a lightsaber battle in the living room, with sound effects to boot. Mom called down from her office with a somewhat hesitant "Jimmy?...What are doing?" to which I responded "Um...I'm making a lightsaber battle, thing..." and she replied "Um...ok...you're kindof scaring me". Or something like that; I don't remember the exact words. I was by no means crushed by this encounter, but I did come to learn that people are weirded out by random creativity. People don't like it when you swing invisible lightsabers at no one. They think it's odd.
The lesson has been reinforced through a long series of minor events. School, of course, is also connected. School never told me that creativity was bad per se, but it did tell me that
school is everything and if creativity falls by the wayside, then so be it.
I'm in college now, and school is much less of a burden. I've switched from writing to typing, and I've typed a lot of stuff. And I've made over 400 youtube videos, which is still just a tiny fraction of what I want to say. I don't think that anyone has watched even half of my videos. And you know what? You don't have to. I don't have the right to demmand people's attention, and 400 videos is
a lot. Even watching half of them would be incredibly time-consuming. So I'm not saying that I deserve attention more than anyone else. I'm just saying that I wish I had someone who was as interested in this creative stuff as I am, and then we could talk. And we could help each other.
It's not about popularity. It's about collaboration. It's about dreams. And yes, I suppose it's also about a sense of self-worth; if people paid more attention I might have a little more faith in my dreams.
Even I have the tendency to ignore myself. I do not dream as much as I can. I hold back a bit, I hesitate. But even with that hesitation I can tell you that I dream of infinity.
It seems to me that both my greatest joys and my greatest sorrows have been rather hidden from the public view.
There's a lot more I want to say.
If you're listening, let me know.
