“How do you keep creating something new on a regular basis?,” I asked Ganzeer in reply to a request he proposed in issue #206 of his amazing newsletter, Restricted Frequency. “I feel like I’m screaming into a void sometimes.” I didn’t expect him to reply, but there, in issue #207, he did:

The greater the void, the louder the scream must be, Mario.

Quite a few modes of creation do necessitate a great deal of solitude, and with that comes that sense of screaming into the void. It is more than a sense most of a time, but indeed a reality. I see no other way around it but to keep creating.

Keep creating, Mario, create all the things that are nagging at you to be made. Create them for no other purpose than their burning desire to exist. Keep at it, keep going, and keep creating until you have a big and strong enough body of work that cannot be ignored, no matter how vast the void may be. And more importantly, Mario, a body of work that you can be proud of, which I think is the most important thing of all.

Love your blog, btw.

Ganzeer

If this doesn’t make me write more, blog more, create more, than I don’t know what will.

I’ve been sitting here all day trying to put myself in the right frame of mind to write, I don’t know, this powerful essay, this heart-wrenching and deeply personal piece of writing that I would be proud to put out into the world, but I’ve been failing. I’ve been feeling my chest tighten and my mind racing for distraction all day, and I’ve been having a helluva time trying to reign it in and just write something. You know what helped? Reading some of my old blog posts from the summer of 2020. These essays were short and to the point, and as I re-read them for the first time in years, I remembered my mindset back then and my intention for this place:

This place is mine and I can write and create whatever I want.

I let myself get psyched out by false expectations. At some point over the last 2 to 3 years, I set the bar so high for myself that I simply stopped trying to reach it. I grew content letting this place languish, to let my, yes, talents go to waste, and why? I set the rules, and because I set the rules, I can also change them.

“Keep creating,” Ganzeer advised. That’s the only rule I need. Let’s go.