Potential man must die.

My life is circling back towards self doubt and fear. It seems the most difficult thing for me is to calm myself down and to simply proceed with working towards my gaosl. The opposite occurs where I try doing some other thing I’m interested in or think about some other irrelevant distraction. I’m sick of it. It’s as if the noise in my life constantly reorients the direction I want to go towards.

I have mostly committed myself towards a singular goal now: To become a writer who lives in Japan. While I have worded parts of this goal in the past, I am at a point where I must simply be singularly focused on this or I will continue to drift around. My mind constantly avoids sitting down to write or learn Japanese because it feels as though these two things aren’t the thing I really like. I’m questioning myself if this is the right path: do I actually like the process of writing itself or do I just playing with ideas?

My answer so far is I haven’t truly experimented to answer this question with confidence. I thought I didn’t like reading or writing, yet I feel aspects and moments where it is actually enjoyable. Like writing one of the first scenes for Remember Rain, I noticed how I liked constantly adjusting my words to properly express want I want to express in the scene. Even though the putting the words to the page felt just a brain dump of stuff, the end result is at least a tangible thing I can read and adjust. As for reading, I bought a Kobo Clara BW recently on a whim and have started a (somewhat consistent) reading habit. While the book I’m reading right now, The Problem of the Puer Aeternus by Marie-Louise von Franz, is kind of filled with a bunch of analysis of symbolic meanings, I’m already finding a sort of subtle developing knowledge within myself of the stuff I read. It’s hard to explain, and it is likely because this book was chosen as a result of myself looking like a scarily similar model as the book talks about, but I’m gaining a sort of intuitive gain of knowledge I can apply into my life and writing.

With that being side, I am making a binding vow of sorts. I am going to kill my potential. I am killing my potential. I am making the commitment that I will complete Remember Rain and make the move to Japan. As others and really my own self doubt have constantly pointed out, there’s an almost objective fact that I am sort of wasting my time when I could spend the following years of my life building something secure in America. However, I must believe in myself and the others that see what I see. A sort of undeniable fact that this decision is an important and required act for me to become fully and utterly myself.

All these other routes, I must let die. I’m being hyperbolic, but really I need to let these other paths close up for now until I can fully define my own foundational path for myself.

Some examples include:

• Utasync, Japanese learning web app designed to learn Japanese through syncing song lyrics to subtitles
• INTERNET GENIUS guest pitch, my attempt at making a funny/ironic video to pitch myself as a podcast guest
• Drawing, while I could develop my visual art skills, I think I must simply orient myself to a singular skill I at least have a little bit of evidence I have interest and affinity in (I wrote good essays in school, I constantly emphasize story is the most important in any piece of media, I wish I could make my own meaningful story)
• Youtube creator, at least not in a direct sense. I want to still make videos, but I need to remove all the pressure in my mind of making some sort of focused brand of myself

Don’t get me wrong, I will still aim to pierce the heavens and do as much cool stuff as possible. But, this is the start of an arc/era that must be established in order to finally meet the truly amazing guy that is myself.