(Apologies in advance for the musings. You're all free to ignore this journal if you'd like, but I have a thought I need to express, and I don't expect, nor want, everyone to care. I'm not that proud.)

So, hello, everyone! Happy New Year and all that. :D

I've...been thinking about something lately.

These past months since I lost my job and finished school for a short while, I've had all the time in the world to myself to procrastinate and entertain myself. Sitting here in solitude this fine evening (or morning, for you normal folk with normal sleeping schedules) has been making me think, though.

I've been thinking about a lot of things: who I am, where I've gone, how I've gotten here, and every existential question in-between. I've thought about life. I've thought about...un-life. But most of all, I've thought about my hobbies...or rather...my passions -- what used to be the one skill, the one pride in myself, that I valued more than anything else. And realizing how little I've done when everyone else has moved on...well, it's made me regret where my life has gone, but more in the sense of wasted potential.

But I'm proud to say, for the first time, I'm starting to hit a lull in my life where I'm finally turning my attention back toward my writing again. I guess I find my mind drifting these days to a major project of mine that's been two years in planning. It's the same one I hinted in one of my previous journals -- something I've yet to act on, simply due to the sheer size and the absurd attention to detail it takes to keep everything consistent in my notes. All this time, ideas evolved, themes developed, and something that was merely a passing fantasy turned into a much larger commentary with a life all its own.

It's actually...a little intimidating. I've made progress without actually making progress, just so I can make progress one day.

Tonight was an important step for me, however. This is probably the first night in the longest time I finally started to sift through my hundred-plus pages of pure scribblings and start organizing the data. I'm not trying to place significance to something otherwise so mundane. I'm sure there are still some of you who remember my stories all those years ago with some fondness, but the trend, as with any of my ideas, is always that I just...lose interest. It happened with my last project too. I got so lost in how to tell the story that I worried no one cared anymore.

Not this time.

I've finally had enough of waiting.

I've had enough of stagnating.

I've had enough of keeping these ideas to myself.

Most of all, I've had enough of them being just..."ideas." I've always had a coherent story, but until they are words on the paper, they can never be a "story."

These past however-many-years, I've watched everyone else tell their tales from the sideline like a remnant of a bygone era. Now it's time I tell you mine. It's time I actually deliver on a promise to be better, because I don't think I've ever felt this passionate about something, let alone something I've had a hand in creating.

My New Year's resolution, the biggest one, is to have the first chapter of my new story out by the end of the month. I'm not taking the easy way, either; I won't slap together four pages and call it finished. I want to show you all quality. I'm ashamed to say that I can't place this to my regular screen name, for reasons that will be clear soon enough, but as I said before, I'll let everyone know when it's up.

I'm done being mediocre.