Ya wanna know something funny?
A bit after I put up my last blog post, I actually set up an RSS feed for the blogs on my site. It’s kinda sad to think how I woulda reacted if someone told me back then that I wouldn’t have ended up writing another blog post for basically a fucking year after that.
Thinking about it as I’m writing this, a year is a long fuckin’ time... And during that time I honestly did attempt to write more blog posts, but I always ended up scrapping them. My most recent attempt was a post similar to this one a few months into me not posting anything. It was supposed to be a post about me addressing the reasons I hadn’t blogged in so long. That one, however, kinda ended up turning into me just discussing and ranting about the events in my life. I abandoned the project then for that and a handful of other reasons, but now I’ve decided to really sit down and just... let it happen. To just allow the project to become what it is and lean into the fact that it became a rant about my life. Obviously, my life and the feelings I experinced during this year is all important context for why I haven’t written anything, it’s an important thing to mention if I’m going to talk about why I haven’t blogged in nearly a year. So, reader’s discretion is advised about this post since I’m going to be touching on topics related to isolation, depression (and a few other mental health issues too). Please, if you feel as if you aren’t in the headspace to hear someone else rant about their life, then prioritise yourself and skip this one for now. Everyone else, sit back and relax while you read a lonley depressed 19 year old complain about life and being unable to engage in his creative hobby for basically a year.
I have plenty of surface level reasons I can name for my lack of writing and engaging with the web in the past year. On the blogging side specifically there was things like my lack of ideas, Loss of creative drive, and even because I wanted to have variety with the tone of my posts! I felt like since my last blog post about growing up had a serious tone, that I shouldn’t post another seriously toned blog right after that one. (This is largely because of OCD...). Consuming and seeking other’s indieweb content, and engaging in indieweb forums became difficult too. I hardly ever looked at webrings, hardly ever went on any indieweb fourms, I just stopped enjoying engaging with all that creativity all together, not to mention how I didn’t keep contact with my indieweb friends (or really, alot of my friends) that well either. My motivation to do all these things I loved doing was seriously low. All this then begs the question: Why? Why did this happen? Why are these things causing such a road block? Would I ever overcome these feelings? The feelings causing such a huge writers block (and preventing me from engaging with others online) where caused by very complicated feelings & issues. Issues that I’m still honestly trying to properly unpack and understand myself right now. I won’t be going into immense detail since this post is mostly just a huge word vomit, but I hope to provide some kind of reasoning here for my afformentioned issues. I’ll try and keep this related to my blogging and the indieweb, but as I previously mentioned, this will also focus a lot on my life and my feelings too.
Yes, I’ll get on with it now.
So, you probably already know this if you’re a friend of mine and/or know me in real life, but the biggest most overarcing issue I’ve been facing for a long time has been my clinical depression and OCD. Probably not a very shocking revelation for most of you who didn’t know, but these two issues have contributed alot to making me feel like shit for so long. As many of the people who’ve experinced clincial depression will tell you, your motivation for doing so many of the things that you loved can take a sharp nosedive and you’ll very commonly find yourself wishing to do so many things... but just not having it in you to sit down and do them. Forcing yourself to sit down and do it can, unsurprisingly, feel like a drag too. In my case, even though I did suffer from these feelings writing my earlier blog posts, when I sat down and just started working on them, I managed to get into the groove of things and begin to be able to write pretty easily. But lately, this just hasn’t been the case. I think I’ve managed to figure out why my depression (and my OCD) have been acting up alot over the past year and the reasons are not very pretty! (nor very surprising) It’s because of (drumroll please) LONLINESS & INSECURITY!!! (with a heaping dose of parental issues) (confetti effects) (no im not going to code those in).
While I still believe that not going to uni this year was the smartest choice for my life at the moment, it unfortunately developed (and worsened) 2 major issues in my life. The first of which that comes to mind is the lonliness I felt allthroughout this year. Not being able to consistently socialise and have more variety in who I talk to day to day has taken a toll on me. Volunteering, participating in the occasional social event and flatting with others my age helps but, ultimately, It’s nothing but a small band aid on the huge hole graduating school has left on me. I feel significantly more lonley as all the days start blending together due to the monotomy and lonliness that I live through now. This greatly contributes to me not wanting to work on anything creative. Something I learned a while ago is that consistency can help significantly in kindling and maintaining a friendship. School is one of the best places to find it since it handles the consistency itself, allowing you to create and maintain friendships much easier. However outside of school, consistency with friends is hard to maintain. Not being in school adds a damper on both starting friendships and maintaining them. Since I don’t have that kind of consistency with a big group like you’d have in school anymore, starting new friendships has been especially difficult for me this year. When I was still in school, I remember that I used to work on my website daily, that I used to consistently write blogs and that I felt motivated to do so. I genuinely feel that having others around me, and having a more socially varied life helped with that. But now, because of the difficult feelings caused by not having that anymore, I have to drag myself to open Writer on my pc just to write a few sentences. I’m not even sure this blog post will release by the end of the year at this rate, and I’m frankly ashamed of that fact alone.
Another big emotional hurtle ive been facing is a sense that I’m doing something critically wrong by going against the grain in such a huge way by deciding not to go to uni. While I intuitively know that deciding not to go to uni at the moment was a decision that is best for me and, at worst, would just delay my acemedic progress by a year, I still had that feeling deep inside that I was doing something wrong. I felt like I was doing something stupid, making an unwise decision that other people would judge me for. And frankly, people did judge me for it. Telling people the truth of my situation tends to lead to lots of questions or obviously consealed judgement or just unsolicited advice. People don’t really see my decision in a very positive light especially because of the fact that I haven’t even managed to get a minimum wage retail job due to the horrid job economy of New Zealand. The amount of effort you put into finding a job doesn’t hold a candle to how easy it is to find one by ‘knowing someone’ or just plain luck. What’s more ridiculous is that while im being seen in this negative light by many, I’m still actively Volunteering at an Op Shop and a Library, Still helping the local community and a reputible charity, I’m not saying this to make myself out to be some amazing person, just one who doesn’t deserve to feel this way.
Bringing this back to the idea of Depression (and OCD), to many who are somewhat informed about the topic, it may be clear just how my depression and OCD got worse (and thus, my motivation to persue my creative hobbies worse). Writing blogs and working on my website are thouroughly enjoyable things for me, however they’re also things that I haven’t had the strength and motivation to do for the afformentioned reasons. I feel like such an important part of me that I was just beggining to develop was at risk of being lost, I felt scared that one of my few creative outlets would be something I eventually abandoned. English was one of my favourite subjects in my final year of highschool because of the fact that I was given the ability to express myself through writing in the way that I was, and writing these few blog posts showed me what I could do without needing to be told to by a school. I don’t want to loose this part of my life that I’ve so recently discoverd my love of. As melodramatic as it may seem, I don’t wanna loose writing these blog posts and my website. I have a lot I want to say, and this is the way I’ve chosed to say it to the world. I’m not ready to let go of that.
The main thing which has helped me in overcoming these difficult feelings is moving out of my parents place. Surrounding myself with new people, being independant, just generally changing my life for the foreseeable future. Because of all the progress I’ve managed to make in combating my writer’s block, I think I’m willing to give this blog and website thing another go. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking and yapping to my friends and I want to share my thoughts and beliefs with the internet much like I did for my instagram blog post. (plus posting the occasional review every so often). This year has been one of the most emotionally challenging I’ve ever experinced, but for better or worse, It’s almost over. I’m positive that 2026 will hold much more for me in terms of challenges, but also in terms of triumphs. Now, I think I’m much better equiped to deal with those challenges.
Thank you so very much for reading my huge rant, feel free to email me for comments and/or discussions.
Thank you once again, and hopefully I’ll see you back on this site reading more blogs next year!