Trial 5: Success

Don’t ask me what this is about please

I have trouble completing things. Books, shows, videos, projects, days, sentences, thoughts—you name it, really. There is something that always seems to dissipate in the space between doing and done.

This is no new revelation to me. In fact, I’ve begun to theorize that most human beings can be categorized into one of three groups: those who struggle to start, those who struggle to finish, and those who struggle somewhere in between.

I am, obviously, a chronic case of the second category. The most immediate example is right in front of me. Whenever I begin drafting a newsletter, I have to scroll all the way to the bottom of my Google doc to start a new page. That means going past everything I’ve ever written—complete or otherwise.

In the past two months, I’ve accumulated four incomplete articles. And when I say incomplete, I don’t mean a simple idea or a few messy paragraphs shoved into my notes app like loose change. If I were to count those as well, we’d be somewhere in the double digits. No, each of these four newsletters is at least 2,000 words strong. ‘Incomplete’ is a misnomer, really. They’re all almost done. Almost.

It’s not that I ever intentionally decide to stop writing. What happens is that whenever I pause and read things over, I realize that this article feels too academic, while that one feels too silly. Too nonsensical, too vague, too fixated, too cliche, too niche, too trending. It is always too something, so I tell myself I’ll come back later, and then it patiently idles there, forgotten until I open the file again with something new. Slowly but surely, this doc begins to turn into a graveyard of abandoned thoughts.

I know what you’re thinking. “It’s plain old perfectionism, Maya. Stop overthinking it.”

You’re probably right, but it’s more than that. Because it isn’t just writing, it’s everything. I so rarely finish a show, and when I do, it’s an achievement. I would read the first book in a series (Skyward, Aurora Rising, and The Poppy War are just a few victims), and even if I really enjoyed it, I don’t continue to the next.

Is it the mundanity that arises from familiarity? Is it fleeting interest? Distraction? Procrastination? I couldn’t tell you.

What I can tell you is that it’s gotten me thinking a lot. What I can also tell you is that I haven’t properly read or written anything in half a year, and it’s basically ruining my life. Everything has been computers and circuits and coding and machine learning and work work work, and all of a sudden, life feels so superficial. It’s funny; I’ve never felt so much appreciation for the arts until I stopped having time for it.

There is no humanity in coding. You can do it with a humane intent, because the code serves a purpose, but at the end of the day, it’s always going to be binary. Put those zeroes and ones together and we produce an ingenious language, but it’s not ours to understand.

That’s the problem with engineering. It’s so technical that you lose sight of what’s important. You can’t see the forest for the trees. Or maybe that’s just me.

What I’m trying to say is that STEM drains you. Not in a crazy workload way, or even in a difficult course content way, but in a mind-numbing way. All roads lead to AI. Every conversation is about cross-referencing assignment answers, or what are the odds you can cheat your way through the next quiz, or who are you partnering up with to generate the 2,500 word paper on the ethics of designing operating systems. There is no creativity and certainly no whimsy. It’s all. Just. Binary.

These days, all I crave is a human connection. Just a normal conversation about anything at all. An inkling of proof that we’re still alive.

I’m honestly not sure why I’m telling you all this. The funny thing about social media is that you can never tell when someone else is struggling. All you get to see are other people’s la vie en rose carousel posts about their vacation in Spain, or generated LinkedIn posts about their latest corporate-stinking achievement.

All I have to show for the past few months is that I don’t know how to finish things. I stop before the very end, as though I’m afraid of what happens afterward. As though by finishing something, it is now given weight; it lives, breathes, and exists, and it is mine to fix. Because there is always something to fix.

Maybe I share this in the hopes that someone, somewhere, will read all of this and think, “yeah, I get it too.”

Here’s an errant thought: four failed attempts makes this newsletter my fifth. If you’re reading this, then it means I’ve finally succeeded. Trial five worked. Yay.

But having failed newsletters implies that there is a certain standard that I need to uphold, which really, there isn’t. I started this as a way to share my thoughts and yap about whatever new fixation I happened to have that month. But if you asked me on a deeper level, the main reason I like to post on the internet is because I want to leave a positive impact. Maybe you’re having a terrible day, and my random fun fact makes you smile, or at least distracts you for a little while.

Cliche, I know. But I think we all have enough problems as it is, and it’s nice to look on the bright side every now and then. I’d like to think you got a notification for this newsletter and thought to yourself “Oh, yeah, Maya, I remember her. I think. Where’d she disappear off to?”

Boring adult things, I’m afraid. I had an internship recently, and I’m currently applying for another summer internship next year. I’ve gone to three (four? I can’t remember) competitions these past few months and lost all of them. I’ve had terrible group projects with teams who can’t communicate and professors who contradict themselves. I haven’t finished reading a book in months and don’t even get me started about my writing progress. Some days I fear I’ve lost the ability to write at all.

It’s a strange feeling, one that’s difficult to pinpoint. Writing is not unfamiliar to me, but it’s not as natural as it used to be. During the months I worked on Starbound, I would always have the doc open in the background, even if I wasn’t actively working on it. My brain would inevitably circle back to my characters and plot and world during any quiet moment. Starbound consumed my every thought, in dreams and in waking.

Let me put it like this: in my experience, writing has never been an idle pastime or hobby, but rather an extra limb—one that needs constant exercise, else it becomes limp and useless. These days, my writing feels like it got amputated.

I saw this tumblr post the other day, and honestly I’m mad that someone managed to articulate it perfectly way before I did.

Just another testament to the simple beauty that is tumblr, I suppose.

It’s at this point in the newsletter that I begin to wonder what I’m trying to say. What’s my point? My biggest worry is that you, my reader, are wondering that too.

But must there be a point to everything? Must there be a moral to every story and a shiny new lesson to be learned? How much of life is actual learning, and how much of it is just fumbling your way through?

I bet you’ve missed my silly spirals.

Anyway, I’d like to think of this newsletter as an interlude, of sorts. I’ve never been one for New Year’s resolutions, and I’m still decidedly not (seems a bit silly to wait till an important date to change for the better, but it’s the principle of the thing I suppose) but at this point, might as well, right?

My resolution is this: I will read and write and enjoy art. I will make time for what I love. And most importantly, I will finish everything I start.

You’ll see me around more often, I can promise you that.

(Note: Everything up till this point was written four weeks ago. I wrote it all in one big burst, as is usual, only to get attacked once again by the aforementioned group projects, then finals. Then the cycle renewed itself once again.

But I came back. I read it all the way through, did some line edits, cringed once or twice, and I’m here now. I’m floating on a river a long way from home, but technology is omnipresent in the way that you can always come back. So here I am. We’re at the end.

It shouldn’t feel as monumental as it does, and yet. And yet, and yet, and yet.)