I have found my passion renewed.
For the past four years, I have only ever read and written as sparsely as the spots of coffee stains on my shirt–Of which I could count with my fingers–Had I been born with thirty hands.
Perhaps that is a great sum to those inexperienced and the unserious–But to myself, I find it an unsatisfactory sum.
Truth be told, I find it to be due to my disliking of reading in my prior years–Well, not my ‘Prior’ Prior years. I was quite an avid reader in my time of youth, but as time went on, I failed again and again to pick up and finish any narrative that I have stumbled upon, til’ eventually I had stopped seeking narratives at all.
I fancy that'd be caused by my own obsession with my own projects.
I fixated much upon myself, absorbed by my own stories–Or at least the ideas of them.
Oh, the ideas flowed–Not at all dissimilar to that of a waterfall, strong, fierce, and beautiful with it's rainbow shining in the air.
But again, not at all dissimilar to a waterfall–It drowned me.
I have become so consumed in the act of producing ideas that I never stopped to actually start or finish a story–Be it in Writing, be it in Reading.
The Brainstorming Process was that of a drug–At first, it was one I indulged in so thoroughly. But by the time I decided upon myself to veritably start, I found myself lacking.
You see, Ideas and Narratives are not the same.
Anyone can create an Idea–but not everyone can relate it.
Ever since I has stopped reading, I have also forgotten how to narrate a story.
And for the longest time, that has remained to be my predicament.
One could say, “Why have one not read to solve this predicament?”
Well... for one, my Tastes stood as my own Adversary.
I did not find any stories to my liking.
I was still quite consumed by myself to consume any media created by other's.
This Obsession with Myself–Or moreso, this Ego–It abstained me from seeing any other form of media as worthy of my consumption.
For the life of me, I could never start a story. I pre-emptively assume that all was just not relative to my stories, nor useful for inspiration.
As I've said, my Tastes–No, my Ego – it stood as my own Adversary.
But eventually, I began working on a story that required knowledge and inspiration that I do not have.
Something Gothic, Victorian–Maybe, something Vampiric, Sensual–even.
And that has lead me to “Carmilla” by Sheridan Le Fanu.
In all honesty, I expected it to be... More...
It was advertised to me by a friend as a sort of “Doomed Vampire Yuri From 1871.”
So I expected some sort of Requited Love, or some sort of Angsty fiction–Carmilla was neither.
It did not fit my tastes.
I projected onto it a modern perspective, modern tropes, and modern expectations.
It–by all means–disappointed all categories.
But that is not to say that I did not enjoy it–I did.
You would've assumed that–accounting for that fact that I abstained from reading stories due to the assumptions in which I considered many stories non-relative and useless to my own–then my disappointment with “Carmilla” would only ascertain my belief in the idea that many stories are not to my taste.
But no, that was not the case.
Reading Carmilla had left me wanting more.
It was very much not relative to my stories–at least not to any major degree–but it was ‘Fun.’
And that ‘Fun,’ rekindled my love for Stories.
For the past few years I have valued stories based on whether they are useful to me, or relative to my own.
‘Fun’ was all but forgotten.
But reading Carmilla reminded me that there was more to stories–that there was more to other people–than just being useful or relative to myself.
And so, I have started reading again.
No longer for usefulness, but for Fun.
No sooner will I start writing again.
