Best Gift Ever
Just about one year ago, a dear, top-tier, best-of-the-best friend of mine gave me the greatest gift I’ve received to date. And they’ve killed it in the past with gifts; I’m talking shipping in bottles of Pibb Xtra from shady markets killing it. But at the time, I don’t think they realized what a gift it would come to be. All they saw was a friend having a terrible time of it, and a chance to make it a little better.
They sent me a job posting out of Polygon for a writing position.
We both enjoyed Polygon’s content, but I worked in college housing. I had an English degree, but that was just a path of least resistance to graduation, to working in college housing. I couldn’t even remember the last time I’d really written something. Some worldbuilding for a Dungeons & Dragons homebrew world, revisiting some old notes from a superhero project from high school…but nothing I could say I’d properly “written.” These weren’t the sorts of things you put on the internet, nothing that would prove how good of a writer I was on an editor’s sliding scale of competency. They were small projects, personal, or remnants of a time where I thought creativity and passion was enough.
But the Dungeons & Dragons stuff specifically was, in no small part, what got me through the worst of COVID-based isolation and, subsequently, my work. And things were hard. Even after the initial isolation of COVID passed and people started reintegrating, work was still difficult. But pouring stuff onto paper, making little changes to a world that only existed in my mind…it was an escape from some of the worst situations, short- and long-term, I had dealt with in my life. And bless my friend, they knew that. I’d complained about work enough to them. It’s a good give-and-take relationship we have.
But no, writing was just a little coping mechanism I had. Something to look back on, or something to give structure to the chaos of tabletop RPGs. It wasn’t something I could do. It had been years since I’d written much of anything, so it was filed away in the back of my head; a skill I had a small understanding of, but didn’t use often enough for it to be of any use. But still, it was nice to have someone think of me in that regard, enough to send me a job posting for writing. Reassuring and uplifting in equal measure, for a skill I loved on some level, but hadn’t used in far too long.
And then they reminded me of my independent research project from college: Interactive Storytelling — Narrative Techniques and Methods in Video Games (brevity was never a strong point of mine). But at the height of my writing, the height of my passion, I blended two of the things I treasured into a love letter to both of them. Or, at least, started to. The project grew and grew, and by the time I graduated (and had already received high marks for the project from my advisor), it just…faded into the background. I never deleted it, and would sometimes go back and think of how cool it would be to carry that on. Never did. But it had been a long time since anyone mentioned it so positively, and I never shut up about that project back in the day.
But with all that said, all their encouragement and rationale shared, they did what an amazing friend would do in a situation like that: leave me to my thoughts. Our time together has shown both of us how fruitless it can be do try and force one another down any path, no matter how good we think it’ll be for the other. But they said their piece and let me think about things.
And that was that.
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I’d been defined by my writing for so long growing up: Teen Titans fanfiction throughout middle school that filled up multiple notebooks; a superhero serial script with friends in high school, combining the best of what we saw in our formative cartoons into a self-indulgent adventure; an entire, 500+ page, single-spaced epic in a world of my own making, the first of a planned four; a short tale about a priest, a rabbi, and their adventures in hell; even my writing in college, from academically-spiteful literary analyses of Twilight, to the campus writer’s club and its ongoing creative mission, to that massive love letter to video games and storytelling. Writing was an escape from normalcy as much as it was a reminder of what I loved and enjoyed.
But at some point, I just stopped. Maybe it was the transition into post-graduate life, maybe it was starting a career in higher education, but I just stopped writing for myself. I stopped challenging myself in that way. And the entire skillset just sat, and sat, and wasn’t bothered for several years.
And then, in late 2020, a friend sent me a job posting.
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If my archives are anything to believe, I must have buckled down and started writing for writing’s sake in the days following that posting: five pieces before 2020 was up, and enough after to float nearly-weekly submissions throughout 2021. It’s not a job, and it pays nothing, but it is still writing. And it’s felt good to have that back in my life.
Writing has helped me look at the things I love in a different light. Sometimes, more analytical. Sometimes, more emotional. Always with the intent to make it accessible, to bring people in with me, to show and share the things that I love, and why they might love them, too.
For the worst, it’s given me an outlet for emotions, feelings, events that I couldn’t otherwise have an outlet for. It was a small source of comfort in one of the most, if not the most, difficult time in my life. Just to have the ability to put words to paper, to even remotely describe what I was feeling, helped more than I ever thought it would.
It’s been nearly a year since my friend gave me that gift: the gift of rekindling, of rediscovery, of reminder. I’ve tried to maintain some level of consistency with it ever since, even through all the strange ups-and-downs my life has entailed lately, and despite all the changes, it’s all been for the better.
The optimist in me believes I’ve gotten better with time, as I’ve continued to revisit my writing and my work time after time. The pessimist in me still doesn’t think I’m ready for a full-time writing job. But the realist in me recognizes I’ve been back on writing for almost a year now. Reviews, retrospectives, essays, analyses, and nostalgic pieces all pepper my archive. While I’m excited for what’s next to write about, it all comes back to that one job posting, and that one message. And for that message, that sentiment, that gift, I will be grateful for the rest of my days.
